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Virtual Worlds III Conference

3-5 July, 2012, Paris, France. http Extended deadline : 26 february 2012
(at right an image from Trip Advisor)

Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to announce and call for papers for the Third International Conference on Virtual Worlds (VW’2012) which will be held from July 3 to 5, 2012 in Paris (La Défense).

Background

A Virtual World can be defined as a computer-simulated environment with its own physical and biological laws, populated by dynamic interacting entities such as artificial creatures and human avatars. Whereas Virtual Reality largely focuses on the design of 3D immersive spaces, and Artificial Life on the modeling and study of life-like systems, Virtual Worlds embrace both dimensions by synthesizing an entire digital universe. Their design and realization requires competency in various fields from Virtual Reality and Physics to Artificial Life and Ecology, Computer Graphics, High Performance Computing, and more.

Virtual Worlds have many applications in 3D simulation, computer games and online business. However, the approach is still broader and more fundamental. It also addresses the crucial problem of elucidating the constitutive principles by which large numbers of interacting elements can self-organize and produce emergent phenomena as they are observed in the natural world. Therefore the study of Virtual Worlds is particularly concerned with the formal basis of synthetic universes and offers a promising new way to contribute to the understanding of Nature and of complex systems in general.

Subjects

Topics of interest for the conference include, but are not limited to:

Virtual World applications
- Video games and entertainment
- Educational, medical and business solutions
- Virtual economies
- Social and philosophical implications 
- Virtual Worlds and Ecology
Virtual World technologies
- High performance and low latency solutions
Virtual and Augmented Reality
- “Avatarization”
- Human-machine interfaces
Virtual World fundamentals
- Artificial physics and chemistries
- Complex systems, emergence, self-organization
Artificial Life
- Artificial life and ecosystems
- Evolution, co-evolution and adaptation
- Collective intelligence, cooperation, communication
Artificial creatures
- Avatars
- Virtual creatures
- Intelligent agents
- Conversational agents

Keynotes Speakers :
Craig W. Reynolds and Ken Perlin

Submissions

The Program Committee of VW’2012 is looking forward to high quality papers on substantial, original, and unpublished research.

Full papers may be submitted electronically from 16 October 2011 to 16 February 2012 via the conference website.

All submitted work will be assigned for double blind peer review. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the conference and present their work.

Papers must be submitted in LNCS format and be up to 10 pages in length including abstract, figures and references. Formatting instructions are available at : http://www.springer.com/lncs

Short papers (4 pages including abstract, figures and references) can also be submitted and selected ones will be presented as posters during demos session.

Artistic and technical demos are also welcome and can be submitted by contacting alainlioret@gmail.com before 12 February 2012.
Final demos has to be set up before 05 May 2012.

Important Dates

Paper submission deadline: 26 February 2012
Notification of acceptance : 15 March 2012
Early registration before : 26 March 2012
Final paper deadline: 23 April 2012
Conference days : 03 July to 05 July 2012

We look forward to welcoming you at the conference!

Steering Committee

- Alain Lioret, Université Paris 8 (Chairman) Contact : alainlioret@gmail.com
- Jean-Claude Heudin, Institut International du Multimédia (Co-chairman) Contact : jean-claude.heudin@devinci.fr
- Stefan Bornhofen, EISTI (Co-chairman) Contact : sb@eisti.fr
- Jean-Claude Torrel, Institut International du Multimédia (Co-chairman) Contact : jean-claude.torrel@devinci.fr

Provisional Program Committee

Bruce Damer, DigitalSpace, USA 
Jeffrey Ventrella, CDM, Vancouver, Canada 
Sébastien Barot, Bioemco, France 
Evelyne Lutton, INRIA, France 
Emmanuel Cayla, ESTP, France 
Kevin Korb, Monash, Australia 
Marc Métivier, Univ. Paris Descartes, France 
Tom Barbalet, BIOTA, USA 
Frederic Fol Leymarie, University of London, GB
Pierre Berger, Paris ACM Siggraph, France 
Penousal Machado, University of Coimbra, Portugal 
Jon Mc Cormack, Monash, Australia 
Maciej Komosinski, Poznan University, Poland 
Mathew Lewis, Ohio State University, USA 
Robyn Taylor, Alberta, Canada 
Simon Richir, Ensam Angers, France
Marc Ebner, Univ. Tübingen, Germany
Gerald de Jong, Darwin @Home, USA
Alan Dorin, Monash, Australia 
Daniel Thalmann, EPFL, Suisse
Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Miralab, Suisse
Tatsuo Unemi, Tokyo, Japan
Leonel Moura, Portugal
Joseph Nechvatal, School of Visual Arts, USA