Los mundos virtuales son la última tendencia en videojuegos, y están trascendiendo su objetivo inicial y básico (jugar) para convertirse en entornos alternativos donde desarrollar actividades sociales de todo tipo (por supuesto jugar en grupo, pero también mantener relaciones sociales o incluso hacer negocios). La ciencia tampoco escapa a esta tendencia y empiezan a surgir noticias de proyectos que utilizan los mundos virtuales para la investigación y la enseñanza de contenidos científicos. Dos ejemplos lo demuestran:
En 3pointD.com (Teaching Science in Virtual Worlds) nos presentan el proyecto MUVEES, que desde Harvard ofrece un mundo virtual para el aprendizaje científico.
Sixth-graders in Wisconsin are apparently using an avatarized virtual environment built at Harvard to learn about science. MUVEES, which is saddled with one of the most unwieldy names I’ve come across in virtual worlds (Multi-User Virtual Environment Experimental Simulator), lets users don avatars to navigate a shared 3D online space filled with “virtual architectures,” “digital artifacts,” and “museum-related multimedia and virtual environments for teaching and learning science.” But why aren’t these people just using Second Life, There.com, or ActiveWorlds, any of which could almost certainly do the job better? It seems that market education in this area still has a long way to go.
El post incluye una acertada crítica al hecho de que este proyecto, como es por desgracia habitual en el ámbito docente, se empeñe en empezar de cero en lugar de emplear herramientas y entornos virtuales ya disponibles y que podrían acelerar el proceso de desarrollo y permitir la creación de productos de mayor calidad. Esto recuerda, en otro orden de cosas, la tendencia en que hace más de una década cayeron casi todas las universidades españolas de crear internamente plataformas tecnológicas de aprendizaje. Esas plataformas cerradas y muy limitadas en su utilidad y usabilidad fueron, casi en su totalidad, abandonadas pocos años después en favor de otras plataformas comerciales de pago también cerradas que, tras el incremento de precio asociado al oligopolio obtenido por ciertos proveedores, se descartaron para finalizar migrando a plataformas libres como Moodle.
El proyecto MUVEES podría considerarse como un mundo virtual de primera generación (o incluso una versiñon alfa muy primitva), dado que se utiliza sólo como un museo virtual que se puede visitar a través de la red. Así va muy por detrás de los mundos virtuales lúdicos que ya existen en el mercado. Una nueva generación de mundos virtuales incluyen su propia dinámica permitiendo a sus “habitantes” crear e interaccionar con su entorno. De este modo el usuario puede experimentar en el espacio virtual de un modo similar a como se investiga en el mundo físico.
Wagner James Au publica el blog New World Notes, dedicado a informar sobre mundos virtuales creados en Second Life (a los que se aproxima como un periodista virtual, visitandolos y entrevistando a los avatares que los pueblan). En un reciente post, God Game (vía Boing Boing), presenta uno de los primeros casos de mundo virtual que simula el funcionamiento de un ecosistema”completo”. La autora, Laukosargas Svarog, ha construido este ecosistema virtual incluyendo organismos vivos, procesos físicos y toda una serie de interacciones ecológicas que han dado lugar a un sistema con una dinámica propia y en cierto sentido emergente:
The result of a year's work, Laukosargas Svarog's island of Svarga (direct portal here) is a fully-functioning ecological system, adding life or something like it to the verdant-looking but arid pallette Linden Lab offers with its world. It begins with her artificial clouds, which are pushed along by Linden's internal wind system.
"If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours," she tells me. "Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated. And it's the transfer of pollen that signals the plants to drop seeds. The seeds blow in the wind, and if they land on good ground according to different rules for each species, they grow when they receive rain water from the clouds. It's all interdependent."
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Even this early into its creation, she's noticed some limited forms of emergence (the holy grail of artificial life developers) particularly in the development of her plant life. "It's very sensitive to very small changes," she says, "like if a gene emerges which gives a plant an extra seed in its lifetime, that can cause huge growth in its locale. And the opposite of course, one less causes thinning growth. I've also seen the same color become a dominant gene so all the meadow cup plants became blue once. Simple things like that emerge quite often." All this sounds like an invaluable experiment in artificial life or testing theories on evolutionary development, so I ask if she's interested in finding out anything from Svarga.
"Yeah," she answers, "Is it fun? I'm totally uninterested in all the hypothetical bollox that gets spouted by academics."
…Nearly all of the plant-life in this area of the sim is part of a beta test for a fully functional artificial ecology system for Second Life. Everything is actually growing and replicating by itself!
The system comprises...
Clouds: Scripted clouds roam the sim and occasionally rain onto the ground below. The plant-life underneath soaks up water from the cloud, the amount is determined by angle and distance.
Sun: The SL sun provides energy for growth, it's measured by it's position and the amount of SL cloud density.
Bees: Little tiny scripted bees fly between fertile flowers distributing "pollen" which contains "genes" describing the plant it belongs too. If a plant receives pollen from another of the same species it produces a seed or a sprout which becomes another independent plant.
Birds: Birds fly around. Mostly pestering visitors for food in the form of seed that you can buy at the seed vendors. But occasionally the birds get hungry and will come down to eat flower seeds or seedlings they find on the ground. This helps keep the system growth in check. Very occasionally you might catch a bird chasing a bee too !
Trees: Trees are grow from seeds to mature. When they mature they become fertile and occasionally flower. Flowers are pollinated by bees and then seed. Tree seeds blow in the wind and if they land on fertile ground will slowly grow into another tree.
Flowers: The various types of flowers grow from seed and are pollinated by the bees. Each flower species requires a different kind of habitat. Eg some only grow under trees or in "shady" places. Others only grow out in the open. Others require wet areas.
Markers: Invisible markers designate habitat areas such as "shady", "boggy", "wet" etc. Some plants can only grow in a certain place and they use these markers to find the places.
Bats and Globugs: Although currently they have little to do with the eco system, at night bats come out and chase the globugs to provide a little entertainment.
Me, Lauk, the head gardener: This system is so complex it can grow and take over just like mother nature in real life! It requires a some tending, pruning and sometimes a little watering too.
Por ahora sólo se trata de ecología naif, pero la vía está abierta para que las ya clásicas simulaciones de sistemas ecológicos se empiecen a trasladar a mundos virtuales. De hecho, existen ya numerosos modelos ecológicos con un grado de detalle muy elevado y gran realismo en la cantidad y diversad de organismos, procesos e interacciones incluidas. Estos modelos, por ahora configurados únicamente como sistemas de ecuaciones y rutinas de visualización de los resultados, podrían ser trasaladados fácilmente a mundos virtuales de modo que los científicos puedan explorar los ecosistemas no sólo numéricamente si no también “físicamente”.
