Related papers: Second Life as a Platform for Physics Simulations …

This article reports on an exploratory case study conducted to examine the viability of Second Life (SL) as an environment for physical simulations and microworlds. It begins by discussing specific features of the SL environment relevant to…

Science teaching detached itself from reality and became restricted to the classrooms and textbooks with their overreliance on standardized and repetitive exercises, while students keep their own alternative conceptions. Papert, displeased…

Virtual Worlds (VWs) are an emerging technology used by a growing number of educational institutions around the world. It is an environment, a way of learning and an educational tool that allows different levels of online interaction. In…

Student difficulties in learning Physics have been thoroughly discussed in the scientific literature. Already in 1980, Papert complained that schools teach Newtonian motion by manipulating equations rather than by manipulating the Newtonian…

Since we cannot put stars in a laboratory, astrophysicists had to wait till the invention of computers before becoming laboratory scientists. For half a century now, we have been conducting experiments in our virtual laboratories. However,…

This paper intends to introduce a game-based 3D Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to second graders. The impetus arose from the need to make learning in mathematics more effective and interesting through multimedia. Applied in a game, the…

We describe the work of the Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA), the first professional scientific organization based in virtual worlds. MICA was an experiment in the use of this technology for science and scholarship,…

This study explores the virtualization of classical reality and aims to establish a clear framework to determine the limits and possibilities of virtual reality. It addresses two primary questions: whether an observer's senses can perceive…

Digital life, a form of life generated by computer programs or artificial intelligence systems, it possesses self-awareness, thinking abilities, emotions, and subjective consciousness. Achieving it involves complex neural networks,…

While LLM/VLM-powered AI agents have advanced rapidly in math, coding, and computer use, their applications in complex physical and social environments remain challenging. Building agents that can survive and thrive in the real world (for…

We introduce ThreeDWorld (TDW), a platform for interactive multi-modal physical simulation. TDW enables simulation of high-fidelity sensory data and physical interactions between mobile agents and objects in rich 3D environments. Unique…

Using Reinforcement Learning (RL) in simulation to construct policies useful in real life is challenging. This is often attributed to the sequential decision making aspect: inaccuracies in simulation accumulate over multiple steps, hence…

Multiphysics phenomena, the coupling effects involving different aspects of physics laws, are pervasive in the real world and can often be encountered when performing everyday household tasks. Intelligent agents which seek to assist or…

Real Time Relativity is a computer program that lets students fly at relativistic speeds though a simulated world populated with planets, clocks, and buildings. The counterintuitive and spectacular optical effects of relativity are…

It has been reported that students often leave the introductory physics classroom believing that physics is less connected to the real world than when they entered. In this paper we aim to complicate that narrative by considering students'…

We tackle the problem of producing realistic simulations of LiDAR point clouds, the sensor of preference for most self-driving vehicles. We argue that, by leveraging real data, we can simulate the complex world more realistically compared…

This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us…

The necessity of supporting more and more social interaction (and not only the mere information sharing) in online environments is the disruptive force upon which phenomena ascribed to the Web2.0 paradigm continuously bud. People…

Physically-realistic simulated environments are powerful platforms for enabling measurable, replicable and statistically-robust investigation of complex robotic systems. Such environments are epitomised by the RoboCup simulation leagues,…

We consider problems in which robots conspire to present a view of the world that differs from reality. The inquiry is motivated by the problem of validating robot behavior physically despite there being a discrepancy between the robots we…