Facets of Virtual Environments: First International Conference, FaVE 2009, Berlin, Germany, July 27-29, 2009, Revised Selected Papers(33 Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering)

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.

Table of Contents:
FaVE 2009 – Track 1.- Development of Virtual Geographic Environments and Geography Research.- Dual Reality: Merging the Real and Virtual.- Exploring the Use of Virtual Worlds as a Scientific Research Platform: The Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA).- FaVE 2009 – Track 2.- Characterizing Mobility and Contact Networks in Virtual Worlds.- Landmarks and Time-Pressure in Virtual Navigation: Towards Designing Gender-Neutral Virtual Environments.- The Effects of Virtual Weather on Presence.- FaVE 2009 – Track 3.- Complexity of Virtual Worlds’ Terms of Service.- The Role of Semantics in Next-Generation Online Virtual World-Based Retail Store.- StellarSim: A Plug-In Architecture for Scientific Visualizations in Virtual Worlds.- FaVE 2009 – Track 4.- Formalizing and Promoting Collaboration in 3D Virtual Environments – A Blueprint for the Creation of Group Interaction Patterns.- Conceptual Design Scheme for Virtual Characters.- Usability Issues of an Augmented Virtuality Environment for Design.- FaVE 2009 – Track 5.- The Managed Hearthstone: Labor and Emotional Work in the Online Community of World of Warcraft.- Human Rights and Private Ordering in Virtual Worlds.- Investigating the Concept of Consumers as Producers in Virtual Worlds: Looking through Social, Technical, Economic, and Legal Lenses.