Daden Limited
Making Real Sense of
Virtual Worlds
David Burden
Daden Limited
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk

Who Are We?
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk
 Full service Virtual Worlds & Virtual
Character consultancy
 In Virtual Worlds & Characters since late
1990s, and Second Life since 2004
 World-class expertise and innovation in
Integration, AI and virtual worlds
 Member, Serious Games Institute
 Based in Birmingham UK, and Second Life

Who do we work for?
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk

What We Do….
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk
Involve Interact
Integrate Instruct

Datascape – RSS News
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk

Datascape – LAX Radar
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk

Datascape – Earth Today
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk

Datascape – Astrocube
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk

PIVOTE
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk
An exercise authoring system for virtual worlds which:
 Lets you write an exercise once, but play it in multiple virtual
worlds, and on the web
 Clearly separates content, structure and appearance
 Allows you to create different user experiences for the same
content based on levels of user expertise, and/or the session
objective (e.g. novice, advanced, revision, assessment)
 Captures student performance data and allows export to a VLE
 Lets you exchange objects with other users and embed them in
your own exercises
 Is based on an open XML standard (MVP) and is open-source

The PIVOTE System
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk
Web User Mobile User
Exercise (defined in XML)
SL Controller
PIVOTE `
Player
Student Performance Data
PIVOTE
Manager `
SL Objects
SL WEB XML

The PIVOTE Flow
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk
Object touched, Controller Player looks
generates hidden relays Node ID up Node ID in
chat message to web-based exercise and
containing Node ID player gets response
to SL Controller
SL Object SL Controller
Node ID Node ID
PIVOTE PIVOTE
Exercise
Player Definition
Data
Data
+URL
Object, if instructed, Controller displays web Player builds web
displays any text page from URL, sends page with response
response, changes response data on for display, and
any internal state, hidden chat channel to sends data packet
and reflects in object, and chats any into SL with
loc/appearance text response on public response
chat
SL Web

PIVOTE Scenario
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk

Levelling the Playing-Field
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk
“Are we able to create an NPC within a virtual world which is
indistinguishable in its complete behaviour from a player
character/avatar”.

Altair Architecture - Physical
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk
Second
Human Web Services
Life
Servers User
Discourse AIML
Chatbot Engine
SL Interface Perl API Bus Discourse RDF
Engine
ASML/
AAML via
web
service Navigation
Engine
libsecondlife BotIF altair #1 altair #2
Emotion Engine
PC or Server (on web) (C#)
Other Engines
Server (on web) (Perl)

SL in Peekabot
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk
Technology Strategy Board funded project between Daden and
University of Birmingham

Apollo 11 Footpaths
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk

Web: www.daden.co.uk
Blog: www.converj.com/blog
Email: david.burden@daden.co.uk
YouTube: www.youtube.com/dadenmedia
Twitter: daden5
Second Life: Corro Moseley
Second Life sim: Daden Prime
© 2009 www.daden.co.uk