Visualizing visualisation : spatial conceptualisation as a stepping stone in the transition of real-virtual world interactionism

Abstract

The acquisition of a concept of space is an essential requirement for immersive migration from the real to the virtual worlds. Knowledge of space and place posit a hard-to-acquire concept for the non technological person. The move from a techno-centric reality to a socio-technic one has aided the transposition of the non-technic disciplines to take up the virtual environments as the next level interactive domain. Initial activity would have come from the geographically-equipped disciplines, with eventual porting to the civil-protection-related disciplines and eventually to the social sciences and the arts. The resultant knowledge gain is yet to yet fully established, as technology has outshone the actual transition, with most disciplines still struggling to understand the shift. This paper reviews the issue of knowledge of spaces, the efforts made to acquire a reality-to- virtual transition, as pushed through the establishment of a spatial information system. The paper highlights the initial work carried out to create an initial gaming environment for social interactionism to occur. The target is that based on available gaming engines and focuses on the process employed to establish the launching environment. The DIKA model is employed through its Data acquisition of real space, it being given a meaning through spatial Information, its conversion to 2D environments and in turn to 3D space as a Knowledge markup and the final Action process employed to create the interactive space through the gaming engine. The paper posits a case study based on the spatial data transition from real to virtual spaces through the creation of a 3D model of the city of Valletta, which model pivots around the creation of point clouds and the resultant voxel/tin models that can be ported to worlds such as Minecraft. The process is envisaged to include potential visualisation through Virtual Reality technology.