OUR VISION

3D virtual meeting spaces and virtual workspaces are the most innovative way to meet, work and interact online with others. 3D virtual spaces or virtual worlds, are ideal communication platforms which allow real time simulations and interaction among users. We are used to keep in touch through e-mails, blogs and social networks, but what a virtual 3D space offers is a synchronous interaction between people, in a dynamic environment that can be anything fantasy suggests. A virtual world is a space not only to communicate, but also to share content and media, such as videos or images. For example users can have a virtual room with a slide projector where they can meet and watch and comment together any media content projected on a screen seen by all people present at the same time. On the other hand a user could organize a presentation of a business idea or his company to share with colleagues. Moreover, Web 3D environments are ideal for simulation and prototyping, as well as collaborative design. These applications make the best use of this new powerful technology. Learning through simulation has proven to be an efficient mean for training emplyees, managers and workers, on best practices or risk management. To read more about virtual worlds technologies applications, please see our Solutions section in our website.

At ISN Virtual Worlds we believe that Digital AVATARS and Web 3D virtual environments are the future interface for our everyday use of computer systems, both at home and work.
In the last 5 years the word “AVATAR” has become known to everyone, through web social networks and virtual worlds, but also in the massive media arena, such as the movie industry. We believe there’s a lot more coming behind our AVATARS and it is what will happen to the evolution of our Digital IDs on the Internet, whether it is a web or grid (web 3D) environment.
The first hints that the web and the desktop itself would go 3D came also from some Operating Systems such as Linux, with the multi-cube cube desktop, Mac Os with 3D menus and Windows Vista, with the semi-3D Aero interface. With the raise of Virtual Worlds, 3D environments had their true moment of connection with the web. As the web goes 3D, the AVATAR becomes more and more important to represent us on the web in 3D environments. So, as a natural evolution, it is assumable that the graphic representation of ourselves on web, our AVATAR, and our digital IDs, in terms of security keys to access web services, will eventually merge into a unique user identification interface, made of an alphanumeric key or ID and a visual representation as an AVATAR.
As Virtual Reality enters our homes and finds more and more business applications, our AVATARS will become increasingly important in our everyday life. It will be through our AVATARS that we will access tools and application and simulation environments. If the natural evolution of digital work environments is in 3D, then our AVATARS are the interfaces between us and our future interaction environments.

ISN Virtual Worlds has been working intensively on efficient implementation of Intelligent AVATARS for training, marketing and customer care applications.
The most interesting results obtained in AVATARS applications are the ones enhanced with an atificial intelligence module. The AI modules developed by ISN for our AVATARS can be easily integrated with any existing knowledge base. By linking a company’s knowledge structured repository to the AI module of our AVATARS, the artificial agents are able to interact with people and interpret their actions or determine the depth of the information required by a given user. This includes managing access priviledges and recognising different users, to guide them to the relevant information they need. Our intelligent AVATARS can be integrated in different platoforms, including online 3D virtual worlds, but they can also be integrated in various appliances, such as ATM machines or other outdoor interactive displays.
In marketIng applications our AI AVATARS can be powerful assistants for customer care and for guiding customers through the purchasing process, while highlighting special offers and monitoring the users’ reactions or preferences and tastes.
Our Atificially Intelligent AVATARS have a vaste range of applications, they are easy to implement and permit a drastic cost reduction, especially in customer care applications, infomation management and service management.
For more information on our AI AVATAR products and services, please see the solution’s section of our website: AI AVATAR.

We have been waiting quite for long time here at ISN Virtual Worlds, for the coming out of the movie AVATAR. I remember my AVATAR talking about this movie with my AVATAR friend Bitser Scarfiotti back in 2007. Some blogs and articles were already talking about the movie AVATAR at the time and off course we knew it would be an important event to raise the attention of people on the “AVATAR phenomena”.
As probably most people know by now, the word AVATAR comes the Hindu religion and originally signifies a temporary body a God takes to come down to earth and perform certain tasks, that he cannot accomplish in his “God form”. The meaning we mostly know of, on the other hand, is the digital image of an AVATAR, in other words our identities in a 3D Virtual World or Virtual Simulation Environment. In recent years, with the birth of online virtual worlds, the AVATAR has become our digital alter ego, the virtual representation of ourselves, at times similar to us as we are in reality, at other times a representation of our beings, more than our bodies. We can use our AVATAR to enter any virtual dimension. We use our AVATAR to work, to meet other AVATARS, to dance with other AVATARS and listen to music together, to watch a movie in a virtual theatre with other AVATARS and share feelings and opinions, with AVATARS as an AVATAR. Today our AVATARS allow us to connect to a new dimension. Through our AVATAR, it is for us the first time we are truly immersed in virtual reality, begin to experience its rules, dynamics. Even its timing which in virtuality can be a different dimension too. Our AVATARs are not only a projection of ourselves, but our digital extension becoming a link to a new world, which can sometimes follow the rules of the world we know, or invent itself in a parallel dimension, that we can experiment only through our AVATAR.
On the other hand, the way the meaning of the word AVATAR is conceived in the movie AVATAR, is slightly different from our digital representation of ourselves. It is in fact more in line with the original meaning of the word AVATAR in the Hindu culture. In the movie, the AVATAR is used to enable humans to reach another planet and survive in its atmospheric conditions and to send soldiers to fight in form of AVATARs. It’s interesting to note how in the movie, the color of the skin of the AVATAR is an intense blue, just like in many Indian and Hindu representations of the God Krishna, taking human form through an AVATAR, with a blue skin.

Krishna AVATAR

As an AVATAR is used to bring humans to live on another planet, the more “terrestrial” and actual version of our AVATAR, if not on another planet, can brings us into a new dimension for working and interacting with people and projects we work with.

If you have not tried to be an AVATAR yet, don’t lose time and experience a truly immersive environment, click HERE to create your AVATAR and begin your experience!

Simulation environments and online collaboration and interaction systems in 3D, are the future environment where we will perform a large part of our activities every day.

Prepare you AVATARS! Internet is already becoming 3D.

ISN Virtual Worlds, in partnership with Memory Dome, is proud to announce the roll-out of the Oasi Foundation Virtual World Project. As of November 2009 the work has started to produce a significant project of social impact in virtual worlds. The project consists on building an innovative communication platform and a tool for assisting disabled people and give them a new possibility to work from home and through the use of computers and virtual worlds technologies.
The project is commissioned by The Oasis Foundation, which is an Italian nonprofit organization that provides medical care and assistance to disabled and elderly people, as well as assisting patients in different types of treatments for a number of diseases. The project is managed in partneship with Memory Dome, a digital media company based in Rome. The Oasis Foundation is based in Troina, a village in Sicily, where the organization has a vast area of land dedicated to its medical and care facilities. The whole area of the Foundation is almost self sustained, farming its own land and cattle and producing a variety of dairy products. The primary mission of the Foundation is to assist the weak, in all forms and ways.

The project for the Oasis Virtual World consist in creating a number of virtual facilities where specific activities are held, to give a possibility to disabled and ill people to do an activity or work from home, through the virtual worlds technology.
ISN Virtual Worlds has planned and is currently building a space of 6 virtual islands, composing the virtual environment of the Oasis Virtual World. The environment is based on the SL Grid technology of Linden Lab and is hosted on a private estate with restricted access to the Oasis Community Members.

The virtual world of the Oasis Foundation will provide 2 main functions:

1. Act as communication and collaboration environment to inform, communicate and interact with the public in an innovative way.
2. Be a collaboration and activity platform for the disabled.

Some of the activities which will be held include:

1. Virtual Learning sessions on various topics in the Oasis Virtual University.
2. Conference and conventions in the various meeting areas of the virtual world.
3. Workshops for virtual goods production.
4. A virtual school for video production and machinima, connected to a real life TV.
5. Assistance and help sessions for families. Contact with a psychologist.
6. Exhibitions of different kinds.
7. Sessions and discussion on religious topics, cultural differences and lectures.

The staff involved in managing and running those activities is all employees or voluntary personnel from the Oasis Foundation or people from the community, assisted by ISN Virtual Worlds tutors and staff.

What is important about this project besides the goals, is that for the first time in such a project, especially in the nonprofit sector, an organization is allocating RL personnel and resources to manage ongoing virtual activities in a virtual world. Most virtual worlds projects in the past years have been sort of “left there” by companies and organizations. The main reason being the lack of resources to allocate to the management of this new channel, especially during a crisis period. That is why one of our goals within this project is to demonstrate the potential of virtual worlds, in a use case where an organization truly invests not only economic resources, but also allocates dedicated human resources full time on the project and for a long lasting period, namely 3 years.

The Oasis Foundation Virtual World will open in April 2010. Registration and access to the virtual environments will be possible through the website. A customized SL Grid viewer is also available to navigate the Oasis Virtual spaces, it will be downloadable for free from the website.
The project first phase is due to last 3 years and it will produce one of the most significant use cases in virtual worlds.

As the founder of ISN Virtual Worlds, I guess I am going to write this first post in our new company blog.

First let me spend a few words explaining why we started this blog. The answer is mainly to inform about the fast development of the technologies we work with and the availabily of new business solutions implemented by our company.

There are various blogs and news sources on Virtual Worlds and Web 3D, our intention here is not to give general news about the virtual worlds and Web 3D market, but to give visibility to our main use cases with virtual worlds and Web 3D technologies and how market innovations in our sector help us develop new solutions for our clients.

The team behind this blog is made of young professionals in the virtual worlds and Web 3D  sector, working in our company: project managers, marketing managers, interaction and strategic designers, IT managers and programmers.

We launched this blog at the end 2009 for a specific reason. The upcoming 2010 will be an important year of consolidation for virtual worlds and web 3D. After this long period of deep crisis, companies are raising their heads and we can see the first serious investments in terms of B2B applications of virtual worlds and web 3D.

As we previewed since 2007, the main applications of virtual worlds and web 3D technologies are for online collaboration and meeting and distance learning through 3D simulations. On the other hand, kids and teens 3D social networks and virtual worlds are booming and the virtual goods market is growing rapidly, especially for this target range.

Our role this year will see us implementing business solutions, through the customization of our partner’s platforms, such as the SL Grid of Linden Lab and Blue Mars of Avatar Reality. While on one hand ISN Virtual Worlds will always keep its community active and invest in the B2C side of our business and through its Virtual Italian Community in Second Life, the larger involvement of the company for 2010 will be around virtual learning projects and interactive simulations for training purposes.

3D online shopping is another application of the technolgies ISN Virtual Worlds develops. We are now able to bring the atmosphere of a 3D interactive space into a website, or create an indipendent 3D environment to recreate any condition and interaction.

For 2010 we also foresee an increase of the use our AI Avatars, artificially intelligent agents for online customer care and call centers. These versatile characters, based on the Avatar interface, can be adapted to handle various functions and they can refer for their intelligence module, to any existing knowledge base.

Performance, efficient tools, cost saving environments and green workplaces are the key words any company should keep in mind for 2010, as the new face of our online identities is taking shape around our Avatars.

I hope you will find this blog useful. Enjoy reading!

If you want to stay in touch with our activies, you can subscribe to the RSS Feed of this blog and you can join our Community here: http://www.isnvirtualworlds.com/isn/lang-en/virtualitaliancommunity

Coming soon!

ISN BLOG! A place to share news and visions about the development and the future of virtual worlds and to create a dialogue among those who think, imagine, study, work and experience 3d virtual worlds, online platforms, avatar realities, immersive environments, virtual simulations… and all the crazy things we work on everyday at ISN Virtual Worlds.