Exploring the Use of Virtual Worlds as a Scientific Research Platform: The Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA)

TL;DR

This paper introduces MICA, a virtual world-based scientific organization exploring VR's potential for research, aiming to innovate academic practices and accelerate adoption of immersive technologies in science.

Contribution

It presents MICA as the first virtual world-based scientific organization and discusses its activities, research directions, and potential future developments in VR for science.

Findings

MICA demonstrates the feasibility of virtual worlds for scientific collaboration.

Virtual worlds can enhance scholarly communication and research practices.

Early activities suggest VR can accelerate scientific innovation.

Abstract

We describe the Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA), the first professional scientific organization based exclusively in virtual worlds (VWs). The goals of MICA are to explore the utility of the emerging VR and VWs technologies for scientific and scholarly work in general, and to facilitate and accelerate their adoption by the scientific research community. MICA itself is an experiment in academic and scientific practices enabled by the immersive VR technologies. We describe the current and planned activities and research directions of MICA, and offer some thoughts as to what the future developments in this arena may be.