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Below is a series of informational writings, blogs and posts about this new and exciting some call it the best thing that has happend since e-bay, some call it a scam. What ever the outcome, the facination with penny auctions is out of control. Swoopbug.com is one of those fast rsing internet penny auctions and swoopbug and only swoobug want you to get the whole story so you can make up your mind. We invite you to visit us for a free trial of our penny auctions but only after you have read the writings below.

Tips for live penny auctions Monday, Dec 14 2009
Uncategorized live penny auction, live penny auctions, penny auction, penny auctions, penny bid auctions jasonnash6881 12:36 am
Gambling hasn’t got anything to do with an always random chance that your investment will not pay off. Like with 21, gambling can be in a very controlled environment. I believe the outline of the site definitely constitutes gambling what with the chance versus reward system and it’s definitely a 0 sum game.
Folks keep bidding, as the costs seem so low — but since everybody has to pay to bid, the corporations ends up making a lot of money — often many times the exact value of the product. Basically, the company and whoever’wins’ the sale are probably going to make out okay — while each other bidder loses. Apparently, there are a number of such sites doing similar models, and the United Kingdom presidency is spotting that it’s pretty similar to betting and doubtless should be regulated as a gambling site.
The reasoning is that folks are paying money and may not get anything back for it — which makes it similar to gambling. However , dependent on how these sites are run, it’s not as though the results are a genuine gamble — it’s still about whoever bids the highest for a good, so it sort of feels like a stretch to call it gambling. It is a dumb move to get involved in any of these auctions in the 1st place ( in numerous ways worse than betting ), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to be regulated like gambling sites.
This is actually a patent-protected method of auctions that was’invented’ in Israel around 8 years ago. It was quickly outed for being exactly that – betting.
I usually agree with Michael, but in this example he is the one with his head in the sand. In any gambling endeavor, there’s someone that wins. Nothing’different’ here.
In the final sense, this isn’t different ; it is equivalent to’liar’s poker’ and similar games – it is betting.
Bidding Tips – All You Need to Know About Bidding Techniques at Auctions
If you’re going to bid for something at penny auctions you should have a understanding of the basic techniques of bidding. There are a number of strategies utilised by bidders to maximise their success ; we’ve listed the hottest for you here :
Head Shake or Nod
One of the most important techniques to take into an penny auctions.
2. In this situation, the bid jumper wins.
it may be that the other bidders would have stopped bidding after $60 anyway, in which case the bid jumper wins the lot, but ends up paying $150 instead of $65.
3. Lighthouse Bidding
This is the term used when a bidder holds their paddle up leaves it there. This sends out a message to other bidders that they are serious about winning the lot, and will remain in the bidding for the long haul. This could have the effects of intimidating the other purchasers into dropping out of the bidding.
4. Cutting the Bid
Bidding has a tendency to increase in regular increments unless the penny auctionseer determines otherwise. If the bidding has been proceeding from $1,000 to $1,100 to $1,200, and you need to bid $1,250 instead of $1,300, you can indicate this to the penny auctionseer by raising your arm and holding your hand horizontally at your neck, with the palm down. This tells him that you would like to chop the increment by half. You can also do this by calling out the amount that you want to bid, although you should not attempt to do this too frequently. .

auction bargain
Online Auctions are great. Not only do you have a chance to win an item at a great price, but they’re fun and exciting. Online auctions have revolutionized the way that auctions are conducted in the U.S.A Whether it’s property auctions, government auctions, or police auctions, Internet auctions have become one of the largest most successful ways to auction items.
There are a wide variety of online auction sites. Largely unknown in the U.S.A are Penny Auctions, where the bid price increases only in increments of a penny at a time. Unlike traditional online auctions where a bidder can decide to bid as much or as little as they want for an item, in a penny auction you can only bid one penny higher than the previous bidder. So for example, a new big screen t.v. will start at a bid price of $0.00. When someone places a bid, they can only increase the price of the item by $0.01 cents. So the winning bid for the t.v is now 1 penny. Now someone else decides to place a bid, so the winning bid goes up to 2 cents, and so on.
Like all auctions, weather they’re online auctions or traditional live auctions, the bidding is over when the time expires on the item. However, with penny auctions because the bidding increment is so small, many penny auctions will have an expiration time that is shorter than the typical online auction, like 5, 10, or 30 minutes. In most cases, every time a new bid is placed on an item, the timer resets to it’s original expiration time. So using our example above with the big screen t.v. if the timer is originally set for 10 minutes, the clock starts counting down. When someone places a bid, the clock resets to 10 minutes, and begins counting down again. If someone else places a bid, then the clock resets, and begins counting down again. However if no one places another bid, and the time expires, someone just won a T.V for a GREAT BARGAIN!!
So what’s the catch? How can anybody really win a t.v. or an ipod, or any thing for that matter for pennies in an online auction? Well, you have to change the way you look at bidding. In traditional Internet auction sites, you can decide what you are willing to bid for an item in advance. If someone else bids higher than you, you don’t win the item and it didn’t cost you anything. With penny auctions however, because the bid increment only goes up by a penny, you have to pay in advance for your bids. In other words, you buy your bids first, and only when you decide to use a bid, will the bid price go up. What does this mean? Well, going back to our example from above with the television, if you wanted the opportunity to win that t.v. for pennies, you would have to first spend money on buying your bids. Then you would have to watch the clock, watch what others are doing, and decide on the most opportune moment to use those bids in order to win the t.v. This makes bidding on a penny auction site very interactive, and EXCITING!!!
So how much are bids? There are several different online auction sites u.s.a with different bid prices. Swoopbug.com,swoopo.com,telebids.com

We go over why penny auctions are better than ebay

Why settle for slow auctions like ebay when you can go straight to live penny bid auctions and win right away?
You can sell thousands of items, but which are the best things to sell on eBay? Hopefully I can supply you with some creativity to get your thoughts flowing.
If you used to be a customer ( which you are, ) what would you purchase on the internet? ( I’m sure you’ve acquired something online before )
What would you purchase YOURSELF?
These are the types of questions that you have got to ask yourself or anyone that wants to buy something online, as it provides precious information that you can use to generate income by selling the things on eBay that will solve people’s’s issues.
folks go to eBay looking for something that will probably either create pleasure or solve a difficulty for them.
And yet another way to put it :
shall we say that you’re looking for a red ball. You go to eBay and type in RED BALL.
Would you be ecstatic and settle with that? No!
here’s a short list though to further spark your creativity on the best things to sell on eBay :
– Phones ( people are constantly looking for the newest phones )
- Sports equipment ( Rackets, etc )
People are always buying these, and if you can get them for a fair price yourself then you can make a killing! Here is a hint : iPods, mp3 players, and private media. Those sell like fire, and people will always desire them!
1 Cent auctions are hard to find now adays, and if there not hard most can’t be trusted. Penny auction talk with random person

auction talk with random person
Interview with a John about penny auctions :

What did you know about ‘penny auctions’?

Penny auctions are a source for great products!
you buy packages for bids that you can use for expensive products. It is a inexpensive way to shop, I have been in bid wars at a lot of different penny auction sites and so far PennyBiddr has given me the best opprotunities. I have won some items valued in at over $800 in total for only $20!

What are the con’s and pro’s of online penny auctions?

I believe the pro’s are you can win a Nintendo Wii for rather less than $8 and the con’s, well the only con I will see is if you get into a bid war with someone. Then it’s all about who has more bids or who can bid at the last 2nd.

Would you recommend online auctions to friends?

Absolutley yes! I am in love with auctions and think of them as a very good source to grab Nintendo Wii for dirt cheap. I know some of my friends are already hooked, they have been going crazy over at PennyBiddr and winning stuff left and right. I think the website is going to soon have a win limit, remember reading a news article about them coming up with an idea. One of my friends is a online adict and has told me about some sites to be cautious about, mainly “biduh”.

All in all, do your research before bidding.

Richard Thaler on Swoopo.com and the rise of the penny auction
By nudgeblog ( Quote)
Richard Thaler’s latest Economic View column ponders the attraction of penny auction sites like Swoopo.com that let people bid for merchandise in one cent increments, while charging them lots of cents for the right to place a bid. In the end, the winner gets a great deal, $20 for a laptop or $15 for an iPod, with the rest of the item’s cost (plus the auction site’s profits) paid for by losing bidders. Consumer electronics aren’t the only items Swoopo has put up for bid.
Swoopo has even sold cash using this format — specifically, checks for $1,000. My colleague Emir Kamenica and I looked at 26 such auctions we found in a data set posted on the Swoopo Web site. For each of these, the average revenue to Swoopo was $2,452. Winning bidders also did well: Of the winners, all but two made money even after accounting for the cost of their bids, with an average profit of $658. Still, the important point to remember is that, collectively, bidders are losing money. Only the lucky last bidder is a winner.
Swoopo also has put up blocks of bids for auction. Since these bids cost Swoopo nothing, every penny earned is pure profit. One recent auction for 50 bids ended with a winning bid of $.60.
Sixty cents also happens to be the amount Swoopo.com charges people for each bid placed. As Thaler observes, it wouldn’t be hard for smaller competitors to come in and undercut Swoopo’s price. On the Times web page for Thaler’s column, three of Swoopo.com’s lesser known competitors are advertising through Google’s web ads. None of them seem to be competing with Swoopo on price: BidRodeo ($.70 per bid); Bidfire($1 per bid); BidCactus ($.75 per bid). Hard to imagine what else they are competing with Swoopo on. Free shipping? Strange, indeed

Each bid raises the price of the auction by a fixed amount and extends the time of the sale. When the time runs out on the auction, the last person to have placed a paid bid is the winner and gets to purchase the item at the auction ending price . Since this kind of auction model is quite new and blurs many lines of business, some consider them to be a grey area financial model.
The companies running the auction receives income both in the form of the fees picked up for each bid, and in the shape of payment for the winning bid. When taking a look at certain items, it may seem that these auctions are making giant profits. However , such sites also solidly lose money on some auctions. Users are much more likely to get excellent deals on newly opened sites, as there is not too much competition from other bidders and auctions tend not to last so long as on mature sites. If a pay per bid auction sites doesn’t attract enough bidders, it sells many items at a complete loss.
Example
as an example, an auctioneer might put a $100 gadget up for auction in a system that charges $1.00 per bid. Shall we say that the starting price of the sale is $1.00, and that the final (‘winning’ ) bidder manages to get the contraption at the price of $25.00. To get from $1.00 to $25.00 in $0.10 increments needs 240 bids. Each bid cost each bidder $1.00. Assuming the auctioneer paid $90 for the device, the gross profit is $175.00. However , it is not known what customer signup costs are to run an auction so even those auctions that have major profit may actually not generate a profit.
The bidder who placed the last bid ( for $25.00 ) has needed to spend at least $1.00 for the bid, as well as the $25.00 to get a gadget which retails for $100.00. He may have spent extra cash on prior, unsuccessful bids. All the other bidders who have placed the prior bids have spent $1.00 for each bid they placed prior to the winning bid and came away with nothing material.
Penny auctions online
as an example, one bidding fee scheme site placed a Net ad that advertised’A New PS3 at $40.59,’[citation needed] deceptively implying a new PlayStation three was available for any one to get at that cost.
This practice is not lawful in legitimate auctions, but is especially nefarious in bidding fee scheme auctions.[citation needed] because of the chance of shilling, even after the players have spent large amounts of money purchasing’bids’ in the auction, the auctioneer can still deprive any of the players of a winning bid by placing an additional bid of his very own. To protect oneself against the chance of such shill bidding, the best practice would be to use only credible established websites that divulge their management, investors or other details of the company.[citation needed] Those sites that do not instantly reveal who is running the site, complete with contact information, should be avoided.[citation needed]
there were allegations that Penny Auction Watch is actually owned by several of the penny auction sites ( which would result in a conflict of interest ) but these are denied by Penny Auction Watch.
Certain corporations that run bidding fee scheme websites show the same auctions on multiple websites.
These websites provide more details

Penny Auctions – a bit of analysis
By steveko
swoopo, bidray, bidstick (bids tick, apparently), bidrivals and dozens of others are running what we’ll call “penny auctions“. Using bidrivals.com as the example, they all work on the following principals:
There are consumer electronics for auction, usually at big discounts.
It costs a certain amount to make a bid, regardless of whether that bid is ultimately successful. For bidrivals.com, it’s 40 British pence.
Every bid raises the price by a fixed amount. In this example, by 1c. It also extends the auction to last another 15 seconds or so.
If you “win” the auction you must then buy the item at the final price.
It’s not a lottery. Because they say so.
At first glance, the auction looks great – buy a phone for $20! Buy a plasma tv for $1.53!
But not so fast. A couple of things that are not obvious to the beginner:
Every dollar of the final price represents $40 in bidding fees. A $1000 TV selling for $1 is a big loss for the site. The same TV selling for $25 is a small profit. Sold for $1000 it’s a $40,000 profit.
You can use a site-provided bot (“bidbot”, “bidbutler”…) to bid on your behalf. If two people do this simultaneously, they’ll both lose a lot of money with no apparent gain.
So, is it a scam? Well, there are really two quesions:
If the site is running completely as described, legitimately, and not using shill bidders (bidding on their own auctions), is this an honest way to make a living – and should you participate?
How do you know if a site is legitimate? Is it likely to be?
Is this honest?
I see very little to distinguish these penny auctions from gambling:
When you bid, whether you win or not depends entirely on whether anyone else bids in the next 15 seconds. Assuming you’re bidding on an item which is clearly a bargain (eg, $5 for a TV), then the normal considerations of auctions do not apply: any rational person would bid if they could so for free.
The house take is enormous. Frighteningly so. For example, imagine on average the site sells items at a 65% discount from RRP, and bids cost 40 times as much as the amount they increase the value by. This means that it costs on average (100-65)x40 to win a $100 item (whose value is now $65), or in other words (100-65)x40/65=$21.50 to win one dollar’s worth of value. By comparison, a skilled blackjack player in a casino can pay as little as $1.01 to win $1’s worth of value.
Most bids give no return to the bidder. This means that even if you don’t want to call it “gambling”, it should still be regulated, as the potential for dishonesty is great. You don’t want to be bidding for a dead donkey.

– Can you trust them?
There are two main risks:
The site may use “shill bidders” to bid on items that would otherwise go for a low price. This could prevent you ever winning, or cause you to spend far more than you want.
Even if you “win”, the site may never ship. The whole thing could be a scam.
Fortunately, there are sites on the look out for this kind of thing, such as pennyauctionwatch.com. There is evidence of dodgy sites, such as fake testimonials.
So, what are the incentives for a site to use shill bidding? Well, as we saw above, the difference between a $1000 item selling for $1 and $25 doesn’t look like much, but it’s the difference between breaking even and posting a big loss. Imagine there is fairly steady bidding activity, but there are just a few gaps before that $25 mark. If the site could shill just a few times, they would massively increase their profitability.
But how much should they shill? Consider two strategies:
bid whenever the time gets to 1 second; or
bid immediately after anyone else bids.
In 1), the shill bids guarantee almost any asking price, as long as there is still some demand. This has the potential to greatly increase profit, and decrease variance.
In 2), half the bids end up being shill bids. This causes two problems: first, you’re directly losing one bid fee for every shill bid. Second, by inflating the price, you’re accelerating reaching the point at which people no longer want to bid, because the prize at stake is shrinking. So if people might normally bid strongly up to half the value of the item, then shilling along the way is just replacing paying bids with free ones. You might even decrease the final sale value, and every dollar of sale value lost is $40 of bidding fees lost.
Conclusion: shill bidding seems likely to occur, in small doses, because the incentive is just so strong.
Can you beat them?
Probably not. It’s been tried. To beat it:
You have to find a site that is not a complete scam.
You have to find a site that is completely honest. Even a little bit of shill bidding will crush you.
You have to defeat an absolutely incredible house take of 95% (remember, normal house take for gambling ranges from 1% to 5%).
You have to know enough about the auctions and your fellow users to make you fairly confident that no one will bid in the next 15 seconds. In the $1000 TV at $25 case (40c to bid), you need there to be a greater than 1/250 chance that you will win the auction with this one bid. Sound easy? Think: if that were the case, how did the price get to $25? It would stop, on average, at $2.50.
If it is beatable, you’d think people would have done it. And, since they’re capped at 4 wins per month generally, there would not be much harm in them sharing their secret. Unless they have a network of penny auction-beating bots. There’s a thought.
But just in case you wanted to try:
Compare sites. Find a safe one that appears to be losing money.
Collect lots of data. Try GreaseMonkey.
Find the right time of day, with the least competition.
Track all the auctions, pick individual moments and place bids.
Don’t try and win a specific auction. Bid any time your positive expectation on that bid is positive. The moment could pass.
Consider the effect of distractions. A good moment might be when several auctions are closing at the same time. You could even engineer that by bidding on several simultaneously.
Consider using several accounts to bid with, to drive off other bidders. If you know they’re paying attention and will react appropriately, that is. I’m thinking you bid with a group, gradually spacing their bids further apart and hoping you can sneak a 15 second gap through.

Penny Auctions – Skill or Chance?
December 21, 2008 by techobserver
BBC News brought the whole area of Penny Auctions to my attention yesterday. These “auction websites” are being accused of really being nothing more than a lottery with 0 skill, I duely got myself an account on one of the biggest (madbid.com, swoopo.com is another) to see for myself.
The premise;
Lots of highly desirable items (laptops, cars, cash etc) are available to be bid on that look like crazy cheap prices at first, 1 or 2 pounds.
When you place a “bid” you don’t specify an amount, everyone just increases the item’s current price by 1p.
You have to *pay* to place a bid, about a pound a time.
Each auction has an “auction time” normally only about 2 minutes.
Each time a penny bid is placed, the timer resets back up to 2 minutes.
You win the item if you bid and the time reaches 0 with no one else bidding.
In effect – when you place a bid you are hoping no one else bids again in the next 2 minutes. I really fail to see the skill here, it’s a game of chance, the luck that no one else will bid on that item. I observed some live auctions, they go on for hours.
I watched the 10 live auctions this afternoon for about half an hour, time after time the timers would get to just 2 or 3 seconds before go straight back to the max. Let’s remember that it costs about £1 to place a bid, if an item is shown as £15, that means there has been 1500 penny bids, each costing £1 – when the site is giving away a sub grand laptop I know who’s winning!
In the half hour I only saw 2 auctions actually end, their timers getting to 0. One was a “prize” of 50 extra bids, the other some spa day. The 3 free bids I got? I went for the new

form factor MacBook of course – the timer didn’t even get close to 0 each time.
The testimonials page of this site seems to suggest Fiona Philips – the embodiment of the opinionated Daily Mail reading lower middle classes has told the viewers of GMTV this site is “a sure way to beat the credit crunch” – Fiona, you’ve let your people down.
I’d steer clear – I wouldn’t go so far as to say scam as they are pretty above board with how it all works but don’t believe there is any skill.

Bidding on Swoopo auctions starts at 15c, with no reserve prices.
The price goes up by 15c with each bid placed.
If a bid gets placed in the final moments, the auction is extended automatically by up to 20 seconds.
Each bid placed on an auction costs $0.75.
As some netizens commented , this new way of auction is “manipulating game theory to tap stupidity, the greatest resource on this planet.” Think about a tiny deal–if you buy something worth 20$ with a successful bid of 15$, there have to be 100 bids, which equal to 75$. The bidders including yourself collectively have paid Swoopo $15+75=90$. Any item worth 150$ or more will bring Swoopo 750$ net profit. The auction is very much like a casino machine gamble. Only in Swoopo’s design, human beings form the machine. And because of human stupidity, Swoopo is going to run just like a machine, with the result and profit very predictable.
Swoopo calls it “entertainment auction”–this is disgusting. Swoopo makes bidders reveal their stupidity, watches, and mocks them while money piles up on its account.
*** ***
Now, how do we beat swoopo?
Since the design of swoopo is based on the assumption that human beings collectively will act in a stupid way, we can beat swoopo if we somehow reshape our collective action in swoopo auction.
Here is how we do it:
Outside of swoopo, bidders have to form their own association–Association of Swoopo Bidders (ASB)–make some decisions based on simple calculations, and enforce the decision

Telebid Scam or not?
Firstly, what is Telebid? Telebid is an auction site, but an auction site with a difference. Firstly you cannot just bid on any old auction that comes up, you have to pay to be able to bid.

So how does Telebid work? First you need to register. Once registered you log in and buy bids. Bids cost 50p (£0.50) each and come in a variety of packs from £5 for 10 bids to £250 for 500 bids. Now you can use these bids to bid on auctions. An auction starts at £0.00 at a predetermined time. When someone places the first bid the price goes up by £0.07 and the time that the action ends increases by a random number of seconds from (anything from 1 second to 20 seconds). The time will count down until the time reaches zero and whom ever is the last bidder at that time wins the auction but every time someone bids this adds time to the countdown timer. Let us explain this further:

An auction is due to start at £0 in 4 hours (time now 1300). Someone places a bid and the bid increases to 4hours 10 seconds and the price goes to £0.07. When the count down timer reaches less than 1 minute (in around 4 hours) others will start bidding (maybe sooner) and for every bid the price will increase and so will the count down timer. When the count down reaches 1 second many people will sometimes bid and push the timer high and the count down continues. This carries on sometime for minutes and sometimes for hours until everyone else gives up and the count down time reaches zero and who ever is the bidder at that time wins the auction at what ever price it has reached.

An example: A wristwatch will start a Telebid auction in 4 hours time. Someone has placed a bid which puts the price at £0.07 and ads 10 seconds to the timer. With 2 hours to go someone else places a bid and the price goes to £0.14 and the time has increased by a few seconds. Most bidders will not bill until less than a minute is left. With only seconds to go 10 bidders put in bids and the price increases by £0.70 and the timer increases by 1 minute 10 seconds. And so it goes on until 1 bidder is left when the timer reaches zero (and the price can have increased to £10, £50, or even £300 depending on the value of the watch and what people are willing to bid up to). Sometimes an item will sell for a fraction of the value. A Nintendo Wii for example may sell for £20. The site also sells bids called ‘free bids’. 300 free bids (worth £150) are offered for sale at 100% off. In other words if you win that auction you will receive 300 bids to use at future auctions but not have to pay for them.

So how does the Telebid site make money? Ok, let us do the maths. Each bid increases the auction price by £0.07 but COSTS £0.50. Many people are bidding on the same item. Because free bids are free, i.e. you do not pay for them if you win, the price can rise to much more than the actual value. Sometimes 300 free bids can end an auction at over £200. How much does the site make for this? £200/£0.07=2857 bids at £0.50 each bid=£1428 for something that has cost them £150. Another example is a laptop computer valued at £899 but with 100% off finally sells for £400 (but the buyer only pays for delivery). £400/£0.07=5714 bids at £0.50 per bid=£2857 instead of the £899 it cost the site.

What is the catch? Only one person can win each Telebid auction. Therefore there are numerous losers. Is Telebid a scam? That depends on your definition of Scam. Does the Telebid Auction site give you what you pay for? Well you pay for bids and that is what you get. When you use your bids do you get the items you bid for? Mostly, NO. Most people will lose an auction. Is that a scam. No You do not have to bid. Then why did you come here? To try to get something that has been suggested you could get it cheap. This site is playing on your own greed. Does that make it a scam? No. Do people who win auctions get the items that they won? We do not know. We only know that if you bid on and win an auction of free bids then you will receive your free bids. Do Telebid have people or robots that bid and win their own auctions thus denying members a chance to win? We do not know but why do they need to? As you can see from the above figures they make enough profit from each auction without resorting to cheating. Ok, some auctions they will lose some money but overall they make large profits on most of the auctions.

How to win? Don’t buy bids. Seriously, only buy your initial bids of say 250 bids. Then bid only on bids. Ignore the temptation to bid on other items. Only bid on free bids and then use the bids you win to bid on more bids until you have several thousand bids. Then you can set bid butlers to bid on other items knowing that you can outbid others. Any bids you do not have to use are returned to your bid account. For example if you have 15000 bids and set a bid butler to bid for a laptop auction 100% free (an auction for a laptop that if you win the Telebid auction you only pay for the postage). You set the bid butler to bid starting from £500 up to £1000 (7142 bids). The auction ends at £800 so you used 4285 bids so 2857 bids are returned to your account. Don’t forget to now bid on more bids to top up your bid account.

How it works
In the typical case, players are asked to pay a non-refundable fee each time to purchase “bids.” These “bids” can then be spent on “auctions.” The act of spending a “bid” on an “auction” raises the cost of the item by a fixed amount. Additionally, the act of spending a “bid” on an “auction” typically also extends the deadline of the “auction,” providing an opportunity for a competing player to place another “bid”, thus extending the “auction” again. The game is a brinksmanship game: each successive “bid” lowers the value of the “reward”, and the last player to decide to place a “bid” and lower the value of the reward wins that reward.
Once the “auction” has been won, the auctioneer collects the final cost of the item in addition to the monies already collected by selling “bids”.
Example
For example, an auctioneer might put a $100 gadget up for auction in a system that charges $1.00 per bid. Each bid increases the auction price by $0.10. Let’s say that the starting price of the auction is $1.00, and that the final (“winning”) bidder manages to acquire the gadget at the price of $25.00. To get from $1.00 to $25.00 in $0.10 increments requires 240 bids. Each bid cost each bidder $1.00. Thus, the auctioneer has collected $240.00 for the bids, plus $25.00 for the sale of the item, for a total of $265.00. Assuming the auctioneer paid $90 for the gadget, the gross profit is $175.00. However, it is unknown what customer acquisition costs are to run an auction so even those auctions that appear to have high profit may actually not generate a profit.(unlikely)
The bidder who placed the last bid (for $25.00) has had to spend at least $1.00 for the bid, as well as the $25.00 to purchase a gadget which retails for $100.00. He may have spent more money on prior, unsuccessful bids. All the other bidders who have placed the prior bids have spent $1.00 for each bid they placed prior to the winning bid and came away with nothing material.
Online penny auctions
In the last few years, there have appeared a number of successful sites operating on this model, which they usually call “penny auctions”. Typically, consumer electronics such as cameras, laptops and MP3 players are sold. Bids typically cost 10-25c USD each(or 50p on Swoopobug.com, $1 on Winners24.com and up to £1.50 on MadBid.com in GBP), each increasing the final value of the auction by 1-2c(or 1p), and extending the time of the auction by another 10 seconds or so. For example, bid4vouchers.co.uk sells bids for 50 British pence, raising the price by one penny. This means that any item which sells for more than 1/40 the RRP is a guaranteed profit. Any item which sells for the RRP is effectively selling at a 4,000% profit. Conversely, an item that sells for 1c is clearly a loss of whatever the site must pay for the item – it is generally presumed that the sites “drop ship” the items. The most well known examples are perhaps Tenderosity.com, bid4vouchers.co.uk, bidray.com, gozila.co.uk and bidstick.com, with dozens now in existence. Due to the real possibility of people spending a lot of money on the sites with no gain, or spending more than the retail value of the item they end up winning, a number of blog posts and articles analyzing and criticizing the model appeared. Other articles support the concept as a fun and innovative form of auction. One programmer, Andy Garcia, and Rupert Elder, a Graduate in Economics from the University of Warwick tried to “game” Gozila and MadBid, but failed to win any auctions before abandoning the attempt.
While penny auctions appear to have much in common with lotteries and other forms of gambling, they appear to avoid being regulated as such. Bidrivals.com, for example, operates from Malta, provides a legal advice statement explaining why it is not a lottery.
Features common to some of the sites include:
Automatic bidding: bots provided by the site bid (called “AutoBidder,”bidagent” “autobid”, etc.) on your behalf up to a maximum value. Multiple bots can end up bidding against each other until all but one reach that maximum value or run out of funds to bid with.
Bidding on bid packs: some of the items at auction include packs of bids themselves.
Discounts for purchasing larger numbers of bids.
Rookie auctions for people who have not won any auction
Risks
The primary risk of the bidding fee scheme website is that it is misunderstood as a regular auction Unsophisticated participants will not understand the distinction between a regular auction and a pay per bid auction, and so might apply poor judgment when participating. This has the secondary impact of polluting internet advertising with ads where a customer is unable to distinguish between regular stores or traditional auctions from pay per bid auction sites. As a consequence, the value of internet advertising and price comparison sites are diminished.
For example, one bidding fee scheme site placed an internet ad that advertised “A New PS3 at $80.35,deceptively implying that a new PlayStation 3 was available for anyone to purchase at that price.
Bidding fee scheme sites also exploit the sunk costs fallacy that is endemic in the human psyche. The fallacy causes players to psychologically feel that the past progress of a bidding fee scheme game affects future behavior, thus biasing the player towards larger wagers.
Some bidding fee scheme websites provide automatic agents that automate the placing of “bids”. These agents are marketed in a way to make them seem comparable to the kinds of bidding agents (for example, PhantomBidder) used on auction sites such as eBay. However, in practice, these agents facilitate the rapid investment of large wagers by unsophisticated players who might not fully understand how the contest they are participating in works
Because bidding fee scheme websites exist in a legal gray area, there is little to no verifiable enforcement of rules.
Much like any auction site, there is no protection from the practice of bid shilling, in which the auctioneer uses a puppet to place bids in his own auction. This practice is illegal in legitimate auctions, but is particularly nefarious in bidding fee scheme auctions.Due to the risk of shilling, even after the players have spent large quantities of money purchasing “bids” in the auction, the auctioneer can still deprive any of the players of a winning bid by placing an additional bid of his own. To protect oneself against the risk of such shill bidding, the best practice would be to use only reputable long-standing websites that disclose their management, investors or other details of the company.Those sites that do not readily divulge who is running the site, complete with contact information, should be avoided.
Penny Auction Watchis a consumer watchdog blog and community that helps bidders distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent auctions.
Certain companies that run bidding fee scheme websites show the same auctions on multiple websites .
Since the profit is made through bidding fees, the bidding fees are not refundable. Also, as with any other site, bidding fee sites can appear and disappear quickly so it could be possible for a bidding fee site to collect bidding fees for several auctions and disappear before awarding the prize. In contrast, in Dec. 2009, Swoopbug.com began a “buy-it-now” function which allows losing bidders to apply all their lost bids towards the purchase of an item. Additionaly Swoobug.com intitited their Bid till you win option which will replace all lost bids( paid ) to the members account until they win an auction This constitutes a significant change in the business model by decreasing risks for the bidder.

Penny Auctions Comparing apples to oranges at swoopbug.com After reading this account of traditional style penny auctions and doing a comparrison here is what you will find once a member registers he or she receives free bids to get aquainted with how the auctions work if a member decideds to purchase bids, the member places his bids and here is where the simularity ends, if the member does not win the auction his purchased bids are returned to the members account , this policy continues until the member wins an auction.
if the member choses to end the auction and purchase the item, any bids the member has made is applied to the purchase price of the item.( so the member still takes no loss) and quite often the purchase or buy it now prices is much less than what the member would have paid in a retail store.. the member is also rewarded for the bidding process by getting free bids just for participating. Swoopbug has done all possible to make sure the member has more than a fair chance at winning an auction.

For example, an auctioneer might put a $100 gadget up for auction in a system that charges $1.00 per bid. Each bid increases the auction price by $0.10. Let’s say that the starting price of the auction is $1.00, and that the final (“winning”) bidder manages to acquire the gadget at the price of $25.00. To get from $1.00 to $25.00 in $0.10 increments requires 240 bids. Each bid cost each bidder $1.00. Thus, the auctioneer has collected $240.00 for the bids, plus $25.00 for the sale of the item, for a total of $265.00. Assuming the auctioneer paid $90 for the gadget, the gross profit is $175.00. However, it is unknown what customer acquisition costs are to run an auction so even those auctions that appear to have high profit may actually not generate a profit.

The bidder who placed the last bid (for $25.00) has had to spend at least $1.00 for the bid, as well as the $25.00 to purchase a gadget which retails for $100.00. He may have spent more money on prior, unsuccessful bids. All the other bidders who have placed the prior bids have spent $1.00 for each bid they placed prior to the winning bid and came away with nothing material.

In the last few years, there have appeared a number of successful sites operating on this model, which they usually call “penny auctions”. Typically, consumer electronics such as cameras, laptops and MP3 players are sold. Bids typically cost 10-25c USD each(or 50p on Swoopo.co.uk, $1 on Winners24.com and up to £1.50 on MadBid.com in GBP),swoobug.com, each increasing the final value of the auction by 1-2c(or 1p), and extending the time of the auction by another 10 seconds or so. For example, bid4vouchers.co.uk sells bids for 50 British pence, raising the price by one penny. This means that any item which sells for more than 1/40 the RRP is a guaranteed profit. Any item which sells for the RRP is effectively selling at a 4,000% profit. Conversely, an item that sells for 1c is clearly a loss of whatever the site must pay for the item – it is generally presumed that the sites “drop ship” the items.[1] The most well known examples are perhaps Tenderosity.com, bid4vouchers.co.uk, bidray.com, gozila.co.uk and bidstick.com, with dozens now in existence.[2] Due to the real possibility of people spending a lot of money on the sites with no gain, or spending more than the retail value of the item they end up winning, a number of blog posts and articles analysing and criticising the model appeared.[1][3][4][5] Other articles support the concept as a fun and innovative form of auction.[6][7][8] One programmer, Andy Garcia, and Rupert Elder, a Graduate in Economics from the University of Warwick tried to “game” Gozila and MadBid, but failed to win any auctions before abandoning the attempt. [9]

While penny auctions appear to have much in common with lotteries and other forms of gambling, they appear to avoid being regulated as such. Bidrivals.com, for example, operates from Malta, provides a legal advice statement explaining why it is not a lottery

Discounts for purchasing larger numbers of bids.

The primary risk of the bidding fee scheme website is that it is misunderstood as a regular auction.[citation needed] Unsophisticated participants will not understand the distinction between a regular auction and a pay per bid auction, and so might apply poor judgment when participating. This has the secondary impact of polluting internet advertising with ads where a customer is unable to distinguish between regular stores or traditional auctions from pay per bid auction sites. As a consequence, the value of internet advertising and price comparison sites are diminished.

For example, one bidding fee scheme site placed an internet ad that advertised “A New PS3 at $80.35,”[citation needed] deceptively implying that a new PlayStation 3 was available for anyone to purchase at that price.

Bidding fee scheme sites also exploit the sunk costs fallacy that is endemic in the human psyche. The fallacy causes players to psychologically feel that the past progress of a bidding fee scheme game affects future behavior, thus biasing the player towards larger wagers.

Some bidding fee scheme websites provide automatic agents that automate the placing of “bids”. These agents are marketed in a way to make them seem comparable to the kinds of bidding agents (for example, PhantomBidder) used on auction sites such as eBay. However, in practice, these agents facilitate the rapid investment of large wagers by unsophisticated players who might not fully understand how the contest they are participating in works.[citation needed]

Because bidding fee scheme websites exist in a legal gray area, there is little to no verifiable enforcement of rules.[citation needed]

Much like any auction site, there is no protection from the practice of bid shilling, in which the auctioneer uses a puppet to place bids in his own auction. This practice is illegal in legitimate auctions, but is particularly nefarious in bidding fee scheme auctions.[citation needed] Due to the risk of shilling, even after the players have spent large quantities of money purchasing “bids” in the auction, the auctioneer can still deprive any of the players of a winning bid by placing an additional bid of his own. To protect oneself against the risk of such shill bidding, the best practice would be to use only reputable long-standing websites that disclose their management, investors or other details of the company.[citation needed] Those sites that do not readily divulge who is running the site, complete with contact information, should be avoided.[citation needed]

Since the profit is made through bidding fees, the bidding fees are not refundable. Also, as with any other site, bidding fee sites can appear and disappear quickly so it could be possible for a bidding fee site to collect bidding fees for several auctions and disappear before awarding the prize.[citation needed]. In contrast, in August 2009, Swoopo began a “Swoop-it-now” function which allows losing bidders to apply all their lost bids towards the purchase of an item. This constitutes a significant change in the business model by decreasing risks for the bidder.

Since the webmaster is the only one who can see the bids, it is also possible for the webmaster to bid on the item himself, which would be unfair to others but hard to detect. This would, however, be illegal and once again, bidders can protect themselves from this by only bidding at sites operated by long-standing reputable companies.

There are six major video game consoles available at retailers right now; Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii, and Nintendo DS. It can be hard to choose which one is right for you. And after you add in the old consoles too, it makes the choice even more overwhelming. Don’t worry too much though. Just ask yourself a few simple questions outlined below and you can easily decide which system is right for you. The points to consider are price, graphics, game selection, and other capabilities.

Price -

Probably the single biggest factor for someone choosing a video game console is the price they have to pay to purchase the system itself. Prices range from $599 for the Playstation 3 down to $129 for the Nintendo DS. And if you really want to save money you can buy past generation consoles like Playstation, Nintendo 64, and Super Nintendo and spend no more than $20 for a used system. The prices for games should also be factored in when making your choice. PS3 and Xbox 360 games are usually $59.99 new, while Nintendo DS games sell for $29.99 new. Games for old systems are hard to find at regular retailers, but they are usually quite a bit cheaper if you buy them online.

Graphics -

The graphics are always improving with the newer video game consoles, so the newer systems will always have the best graphics. The Xbox 360 and PS3 have the best graphics and can display in High Definition if you have a TV that can display it too. The Wii does not have the same graphical capabilities as the other two, though many casual gamers will not be disappointed. The Nintendo DS and PSP lack the graphical power that the home consoles have because they are portable. And the PSP can display graphics quite a bit better than the DS.

If you are considering older systems, each generation is roughly at the same level graphically no matter which system you choose. Playstation and Nintendo 64 are about the same, as are Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. But the Nintendo 64 will have better graphics than Super Nintendo, which in turn is better than the original Nintendo.

Game Selection -

The main reason you buy a system is for the games, so you have to be sure the games you want to play are on the system you choose. Some systems have very wide selections of games because they were so popular, like Playstation 2, Playstation, and Super Nintendo. With these systems you can almost always find a game in the genres you like. If you really like a particular series of games (Mario, Halo, Final Fantasy, etc) you need to be sure to pick the system that those games come out on. Mario games are only available on Nintendo consoles, including Gamecube, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS, and Super Nintendo. Halo is only on Microsoft’s systems, Xbox and Xbox 360. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy has changed systems. You can only find the newest Final Fantasy games on Playstation 2 and you can find older ones on SNES, Gameboy Advance, and Playstation.

Other Capabilities -

Many systems have features unique to them that might be important to you or change game play dramatically. For example, the Wii uses motion-sensing controllers so all of their games use a different style of game play compared to the other systems with a regular joystick. Likewise, the Nintendo DS has one touch screen, another screen above that, and is portable too. If portability is important to you be sure to choose one of the portable systems PSP, Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance, or Gameboy. If online games are and important feature, you should choose the Xbox or Xbox 360. They have the most capable online features.

After considering all these questions you can decide which features are the most critical for you and choose the system that best meets that criteria. If you are on a tight budget but want a wide selection of games to play, you should choose Playstation or Super Nintendo. The systems and games are very cheap now and thousands of games were made for them. If you want the best graphics and online games, you should probably choose the Xbox 360. It has some of the best graphics and the best online setup.

Once you have weighted all these options you should be well on your way to choosing the best system for you. Now go buy it and start enjoying your gaming purchase.

A year ago, the PlayStation 3 might not have been worth buying. Boy have things changed. The system now is home to a great library of games, with a ton of promising titles left in 2008. The PlayStation Network has shifted from a decent first attempt to a worthy competitor to XBOX Live. With the new trophy support and the promise of even more to come with Home, PSN has truly become an impressive service. However, the PS3 Consoles has more than a solid online service. The Blu Ray playback is magnificent, the system’s multimedia capabilities are astonishing. It is a shame that the 80GB system has no backwards compatibility, although it remains to be seen whether Sony will add the feature through emulation later on.

It remains up to you which system that you choose. I enjoy all of them. I do not own a 360, as I feel that the systems are similar enough to warrant the other as an unnecessary purchase, but the PS3 Consoles does get a lot more use than my Wii (although I enjoy the Wii as well.) It definitely has a lot to offer to the hardcore gamer, but new titles like LittleBigPlanet may elevate the PS3 Consoles ’s family appeal to the level that was achieved with the PS2. All in all, the PS3 is a great purchase.

PS3 Consoles – Great Entertainment System

The PS3 Consoles is perfect for you if you are looking for an entertainment system, not just a game console. If you just want to play my best advise would be for you to purchase the Xbox 360. But if you want to have a combination on highly entertaining features such as: Blu Ray, Game Console (The PS3 Consoles exclusive games rock- God of War, Uncharted, Resistance, among others), videos, pictures, music and much more then you should get the PS3 Consoles. You won’t regret it!

PS3 Consoles – Great and Versatile Machine

I bought this about a month ago and I couldn’t be happier with it. The last gaming machine I had was the Xbox, and it was fine. I’ve owned machines going back to the Mattel Intellivision, so I’ve had some experience with game machines.

I’m thrilled with the Blu-Ray performance and have had a ton of free fun with Playstation Home. I’ve also downloaded a couple of games from the Playstation store and have had a lot of fun with those. I’ve uploaded about a dozen of my CD’s onto it for break time. So, I’m really impressed with all this machine can do, above and beyond the game function, which it does exceptionally well. For best results you want an HDMI connection to a true HD TV and a connection to the internet. If you already have a wi-fi hub, set-up is a no-brainer.

When I had to make my choice, I nixed the Wii, because of its limited capabilities and the Xbox 360’s quality control issues worried me, besides the Xbox 360 plays HD disks, not Blu-ray. I think the Blu-ray player did the trick for me. Take the plunge, you won’t be disappointed.

Released for the Wii, Nintendo made the right choice to play their hand into the new system and have proven that Mario could be revamped without any problems. You can continue through the world of Mario Party 8 if you have the techniques and tools available for you. That is why knowing certain strategies are always a good thing to get a leg up on the game. The series is not over with Mario Party 8 and you will have a lot hints throughout the game. Some to get you started are:

1. Make Characters talk- If you are a little board you can have fun with this strategy. Not everything in video games has to help you out. Others can be fun. To accomplish this strategy, you need to be at the title screen where you will see the characters. When you point the Wii remote at the characters, they will talk and make noises. It is really fun to do when you want to add a little bit more to the game.

2. Blooper and Hammer Brother Unlockable- You have to beat the Star Battle with the Hammer Bros. if you are going to want to unlock these characters. You will then have them to help you instead of fighting against you. This will help you advance a lot quicker than normal. Everyone wants to be able to have a lot of tips at their hands when they are playing. It makes the game a lot more interesting in this way.

3. Mini-game techniques- You are going to have a lot of techniques that you are going to have to use to beat the min-games. In Crown Showdown, you are going to want to unlock one mini-game in each mode 1vs3, 2vs2, 4 player, and Duel. When you do that you will be able to unlock a lot of different mini-games to improve your chances to get the stars. You have to be able to have determination in some. Although the mini-games are fairly easy, you are going to want to keep it simple.

The fact that it is a game within a game is a very intriguing aspect of it. The Mario Party games have always been interesting to everyone who plays the games. You have to be able to maneuver through the different levels if you are going to win the game. The mini-games are going to keep you busy since the Wii is an active system and requires you to move around a little bit more than you are used to. You have to be able to have fun in the game; otherwise you are wasting your time. It is most important that you learn as much as you can in Mario Party 8. You have the chance to enjoy another classic and have a chance to be a master at Mario Party. If you enjoyed this article, then you’ll love this Mario Party 8 commerical. Enjoy and have fun!

If you are a gamer, then you probably have heard of Microsoft’s upcoming product, Project Natal. However, for those that do not know, Project Natal is a device that Microsoft claims will allow a controller-free experience for its Xbox 360 platform. While it is an impressive claim, is controller-free gaming something that will work out well?

It is obvious that motion-controlled gaming is becoming the big seller in game technology with the success of the Nintendo Wii. However, the difference between what Nintendo offers and what Microsoft plans to offer is how the motion-sensing technology works. The Nintendo Wii simply uses a controller and a sensor that goes on top of the TV to map out your motions. Microsoft’s Project Natal uses a different approach and uses a camera with a depth sensor to determine your motion. This means that you do not have to hold anything at all to trigger commands using Natal.

Using motion instead of a controller for movement can be a problem. Most consumers are comfortable with holding something in their hand while playing, and some games are not meant to be played without a controller. For example, playing a shooting game will be more complicated without a controller as you need buttons for actions like pressing a trigger or switching weapons. However, using motion technology can add to the game as you can use hand commands to operate a team of soldiers.

Another potential issue with Project Natal might be the same problem that the Nintendo Wii is facing. Because of the rise of casual gamers as a result of motion-controlled gaming, there is also a rise of quality-lacking games. If Project Natal succeeds, there is a good chance that a lot of casual gamers will purchase an Xbox 360 with it. This will result in many developers in developing casual games for the Xbox 360 and these types of games are usually the ones lacking in quality.

However, even though there are many potential problems that can occur with Project Natal, it is still an impressive piece of technology. Like all types of technology, it is impossible to predict whether it will be a success or not until it is released.

Mind-blowing graphics and complex storylines can have gamers captivated for hours at their consoles. Keeping these bad boys running at full hilt is vital, and there are peripherals that do the trick. Whether it’s cooling down the system or charging up the controllers, video game peripherals play an important role for the diehard gamer. video game accessories like batteries, headsets, chargers are a big business now-a-days.

Gaming peripherals are not eye candy – a gaming storage rack holds over twenty game discs, keeping them handy, arranged and safe. Disc skins are the surest way of protecting DVD, HD Blu-Ray, video game and music discs from scratches and moisture. If disc safety is a concern, then protection for the gaming console is essential. The air cooling system will keep a console purring after hours of gaming, while a cool bling kit can add that style quotient to any console, making it as pimped out as the gamer.

A constant fear for any handheld gamer is running out of battery juice. There are loads of options like the Xbox 360 batteries, the Nintendo DS batteries and GameBoy Advance chargers. The coolest would have to be the Charger Grip for the PSP which adds 10 hours of extra playing time and feels like a natural extension to the console. On the road, a car adapter for charging is a great option when taking long trips. Wireless controllers for the heavyweights, the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the Wii, eventually need a recharge and a charging dock or station coupled with a power kit is the only way to go.

Keeping a mean gaming machine clean and dust-free is no joking matter. A designer cover can add a personalized touch to a video game console, with the added benefit of safety if ever it’s to be lugged around. If the vanilla color scheme seems uninteresting, video game coversPS3 skins, Xbox 360 covers and Wii skins add a dash of style, color and fun. Console organizers and carry cases are essential if the gaming console is to be transported safely.

Gaming can be intense and difficult at times, with baffling levels of strategy and multitudes of monsters ready to do battle. A cheat system allows the gamer to be in control at the toughest of times. Dev kits, as these systems like the Xbox 360 cheat system, are sometimes called, will allow the gamer to control all aspects of the game.

INTRODUCTION:

 What is virtual reality?

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated environment, whether that environment is a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world. It is an artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment. On a computer, virtual reality is primarily experienced through two of the five senses: sight and sound

Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones.

Virtual reality can be divided into:

The simulation of a real environment for training and education. The development of an imagined environment for a game or interactive story.

 HISTORY:

The concept of virtual reality has been around for decades, even though the public really only became aware of it in the early 1990s.

Mid of 1950:  Cinematographer Named Morton Heilig & Device: Sensorama

Envisioned a theatre experience that would stimulate all his audiences’ senses, drawing them in to the stories more effectively. He build a console in 1960 called the Sensorama that included a stereoscopic display, fans, odor emitters, stereo speakers and a moving chair. He also invented a head mounted television display designed to let a user watch television in 3-D. Users were passive audiences for the films, but many of Heilig’s concepts would find their way into the VR field.

In 1961: Philco Corporation engineers & Device: Headsight

Developed the first HMD in 1961, called the Headsight. The helmet included a video screen and tracking system, which the engineers linked to a closed circuit camera system. They designed the HMD for use in dangerous situations — a user could observe a real environment remotely, adjusting the camera angle by turning his head.

Bell Laboratories used a similar HMD for helicopter pilots. They linked HMDs to infrared cameras attached to the bottom of helicopters, which allowed pilots to have a clear field of view while flying in the dark.

In 1965: A Computer Scientist Named Ivan Sutherland

Envisioned what he called the “Ultimate Display.” Using this display, a person could look into a virtual world that would appear as real as the physical world the user lived in. This vision guided almost all the developments within the field of virtual reality. Sutherland’s concept included:

A virtual world that appears real to any observer, seen through an HMD. A computer that maintains the world model in real time. The ability for users to manipulate virtual objects in a realistic, intuitive way.

For years, VR technology remained out of the public eye. Almost all development focused on vehicle simulations until the 1980s.

In 1984:  Michael McGreevy & Device: Human-Computer Interface (Hci)

 Began to experiment with VR technology as a way to advance human-computer interface (HCI) designs. HCI still plays a big role in VR research, and moreover it lead to the media picking up on the idea of VR a few years later.

In 1987: Jaron Lanier coined the term Virtual Reality in 1987.

 VIRTUAL REALITY ENVIRONMENT:

Other sensory output from the VE system should adjust in real time as a user explores the environment.  Sensory stimulation must be consistent if a user is to feel immersed within a VE. If the VE shows a perfectly still scene, you wouldn’t expect to feel gale-force winds. Likewise, if the VE puts you in the middle of a hurricane, you wouldn’t expect to feel a gentle breeze or detect the scent of roses.

Lag time between when a user acts and when the virtual environment reflects that action is called latency. Latency usually refers to the delay between the time a user turns his head or moves his eyes and the change in the point of view, though the term can also be used for a lag in other sensory outputs. Studies with flight simulators show that humans can detect a latency of more than 50 milliseconds. When a user detects latency, it causes him to become aware of being in an artificial environment and destroys the sense of immersion.

­An immersive experience suffers if a user becomes aware of the real world around him. Truly immersive experiences make the user forget his real surroundings, effectively causing the computer to become a non entity. In order to reach the goal of true immersion, developers have to come up with input methods that are more natural for users. As long as a user is aware of the interaction device, he is not truly immersed.

TYPES OF VIRTUAL REALITY:

Immersive virtual reality Non immersive virtual reality Semi immersive virtual reality

IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL REALITY:

In a virtual reality environment, a user experiences immersion, or the feeling of being inside and a part of that world. He is also able to interact with his environment in meaningful ways. The combination of a sense of immersion and interactivity is called telepresence.

Computer scientist Jonathan Steuer defined it as “the extent to which one feels present in the mediated environment, rather than in the immediate physical environment.” In other words, an effective VR experience causes you to become unaware of your real surroundings and focus on your existence inside the virtual environment

Jonathan Steuer proposed two main components of immersion:

Depth of information Breadth of information.

 Depth of information refers to the amount and quality of data in the signals a user receives when interacting in a virtual environment. For the user, this could refer to a display’s resolution, the complexity of the environment’s graphics, and the sophistication of the system’s audio output.

Breadth of Information as the “number of sensory dimensions simultaneously presented.” A virtual environment experience has a wide breadth of information if it stimulates all your senses. Most virtual environment experiences prioritize visual and audio components over other sensory-stimulating factors, but a growing number of scientists and engineers are looking into ways to incorporate a users’ sense of touch. Systems that give a user force feedback and touch interaction are called haptic systems.

NON IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL REALITY:

Non-immersive systems, as the name suggests, are the least immersive implementation of VR techniques. Using the desktop system, the virtual environment is viewed through a portal or window by utilizing a standard high resolution monitor. Interaction with the virtual environment can occur by conventional means such as keyboards, mice and trackballs or may be enhanced by using 3D interaction devices.

SEMI-IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL REALITY:

A large screen monitor A large screen projector system Multiple television projection systems

similar to the IMAX theatres sing a wide field of view, these systems increase the feeling of immersion or presence experienced by the user Semi-immersive systems therefore provide a greater sense of presence than non-immersive systems and also a greater appreciation of scale. In addition, images can be provided that are of a far greater resolution than HMDs and this implementation provides the ability to share the virtual experience. This may have a considerable benefit in educational applications as it allows simultaneous experience of the VE which is not available with head-mounted immersive systems.

 VIRTUAL REALITY INTERACTIVITY:

                    Immersion within a virtual environment is one thing, but for a user to feel truly involved there must also be an element of interaction. Early applications using the technology common in VE systems today allowed the user to have a relatively passive experience. Users could watch a pre-recorded film while wearing a head-mounted display (HMD). They would sit in a motion chair and watch the film as the system subjected them to various stimuli, such as blowing air on them to simulate wind. While users felt a sense of immersion, interactivity was limited to shifting their point of view by looking around. Their path was pre-determined and unalterable.

Interactivity depends on many factors. Steuer suggests that three of these factors are speed, range and mapping. Steuer defines speed as the rate that a user’s actions are incorporated into the computer model and reflected in a way the user can identify by means of senses. Range refers to how many possible outcomes could result from any particular user action. Mapping is the system’s ability to produce natural results in response to a user’s actions.

Navigation within a virtual environment is one kind of interactivity. If a user can direct his own movement within the environment, it can be called an interactive experience. Most virtual environments include other forms of interaction, since users can easily become bored after just a few minutes of exploration.

Computer Scientist Mary Whitton points out that poorly designed interaction can drastically reduce the sense of immersion, while finding ways to engage users can increase it. When a virtual environment is interesting and engaging, users are more willing to suspend disbelief and become immersed.

True interactivity also includes being able to modify the environment. A good virtual environment will respond to the user’s actions in a way that makes sense, even if it only makes sense within the realm of the virtual environment. If a virtual environment changes in outlandish and unpredictable ways, it risks disrupting the user’s sense of telepresence.

VIRTUAL REALITY INTERFACES:

DATAGLOVES:

Data gloves offer a simple means of gesturing commands to the computer. Rather than punching in commands on a keyboard, which can be tricky if you’re wearing a head-mounted display or are operating the BOOM, you program the computer to change modes in response to the gestures you make with the data gloves.

Pointing upwards may mean zoom in; pointing down, zoom out. A shake of your fist may signal the computer to end the program. Some people program the computer to mimic their hand movements in the simulation; for instance, to see their hands while conducting a virtual symphony.

WANDS:

Wands, the simplest of the interface devices, come in all shapes and variations. Most incorporate on-off buttons to control variables in a simulation or in the display of data. Others have knobs, dials, or joy sticks. Their design and manner of response a re tailored to the application.

Most wands operate with six degrees of freedom; that is, by pointing a wand at an object, you can change its position and orientation in any of six directions: forward or backward, up or down, or left or right.

STAIR STEPPERS:

Stair steppers are an example of the limitless manifestations of interface devices. As part of a simulated battlefield terrain, engineers from an army research lab outfitted a stair stepper with sensing devices to detect the speed, direction, and intensity of a soldier’s movements in response to the battlefield scenes projected onto a head-mounted display. The stair stepper provided feedback to the soldier by making the stairs easier or more difficult to climb.

 VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEMS:

HEAD-MOUNTED DISPLAY:

Looking like oversized motorcycle helmets, head-mounted displays are actually portable viewing screens that add depth to otherwise flat images. If you look inside the helmet you will see two lenses through which you look at a viewing screen. As a simulation begins, the computer projects two slightly different images on the screen: one presenting the object as it would be seen through your right eye, the other, through your left. These two stereo images are then fused by your brain into one 3D image.

To track your movements, a device on top of the helmet signals your head movements relative to a stationary tracking device. As you move your head forwards, backwards, or sideways, or look in a different direction, a computer continually updates the simulation to reflect your new perspective.

Because head-mounted displays block out the surrounding environment, they are favored by VR operators who want the wearers to feel absorbed in the virtual environment, such as in flight simulators. And as you might expect, these displays also are popular with the entertainment industry.

Data gloves and wands are the most common interface devices used with head-mounted displays.

BOOM:

The Binocular Omni Orientation Monitor, or BOOM, is similar to a head-mount except that there’s no fussing with a helmet. The BOOM’s viewing box is suspended from a two-part, rotating arm. Simply place your forehead against the BOOM’s two eyeglasses and you’re in the virtual world. To change your perspective on an image, grab the handles on the side of the viewing box and move around the image in the same way you would if it were real: Bend down to look at it from below; walk around it to see it from behind. Control buttons on the BOOM handles usually serve as the interface although you can hook up data gloves or other interface devices.

CAVE:

One of the newest, most “immersive” virtual environments is the CAVE (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment).

It provides the illusion of immersion by projecting stereo images on the walls and floor of a room-sized cube. Several persons wearing lightweight stereo glasses can enter and walk freely inside the CAVE.

SENSUAL TECHNOLOGIES:

A variety of input devices like data gloves, joysticks, and hand-held wands allow the user to navigate through a virtual environment and to interact with virtual objects. Directional sound, tactile and force feedback devices, voice recognition and other technologies are being employed to enrich the immersive experience and to create more “sensualized” interfaces.

SHARED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS:

Three networked users at different locations (anywhere in the world) meet in the same virtual world by using a BOOM device, a CAVE system, and a Head-Mounted Display, respectively. All users see the same virtual environment from their respective points of view. Each user is presented as a virtual human (avatar) to the other participants. The users can see each other, communicated with each other, and interact with the virtual world as a team.

 HUMAN FACTORS:

As virtual environments are supposed to simulate the real world, by constructing them we must

have knowledge how to “fool the user’s senses” This problem is not a trivial task

and the sufficiently good solution has not yet been found: on the one hand we must give the

user a good feeling of being immersed, and on the other hand this solution must be feasible.

  • Sight…………….. 70 %

• hearing………….. 20 %

• smell ………………5 %

• touch………………4 %

• taste ……………….1 %

Human vision provides the most of information passed to our brain and captures most of our attention. Therefore the stimulation of the visual system plays a principal role in “fooling the senses” and has become the focus of research.

 VIRTUAL REALITY TRACKING SYSTEMS:

 Tracking devices are intrinsic components in any VR system. These devices communicate with the system’s processing unit, telling it the orientation of a user’s point of view. In systems that allow a user to move around within a physical space, trackers detect where the user is, the direction he is moving and his speed. There are several different kinds of tracking systems used in VR systems, but all of them have a few things in common. They can detect six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) — these are the object’s position within the x, y and z coordinates of a space and the object’s orientation. Orientation includes an object’s yaw, pitch and roll.

From a user’s perspective, this means that when you wear an HMD, the view shifts as you look up, down, left and right. It also changes if you tilt your head at an angle or move your head forward or backward without changing the angle of your gaze. The trackers on the HMD tell the CPU where you are looking, and the CPU sends the right images to your HMD’s screens

Every tracking system has a device that generates a signal, a sensor that detects the signal and a control unit that processes the signal and sends information to the CPU. Some systems require you to attach the sensor component to the user (or the user’s equipment). In that kind of system, you place the signal emitters at fixed points in the environment. Some systems are the other way around, with the user wearing the emitters while surrounded by sensors attached to the environment.

The signals sent from emitters to sensors can take many forms, including electromagnetic signals, acoustic signals, optical signals and mechanical signals. Each technology has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

ELECTROMAGNETIC TRACKING SYSTEMS:

Magnetic trackers are the most often used tracking devices in immersive applications.Measure magnetic fields generated by running an electric current sequentially through three coiled wires arranged in a perpendicular orientation to one another. Each small coil becomes an electromagnet, and the system’s sensors measure how its magnetic field affects the other coils. This measurement tells the system the direction and orientation of the emitter. A good electromagnetic tracking system is very responsive, with low levels of latency.

One disadvantage of this system is that anything that can generate a magnetic field can interfere in the signals sent to the sensors.

ULTRA SONIC TRACKERS:

Emit and sense ultrasonic sound waves to determine the position and orientation of a target. Most measure the time it takes for the ultrasonic sound to reach a sensor. Usually the sensors are stationary in the environment — the user wears the ultrasonic emitters. The system calculates the position and orientation of the target based on the time it took for the sound to reach the sensors.

Disadvantages: Sound travels relatively slowly, so the rate of updates on a target’s position is similarly slow. The environment can also adversely affect the system’s efficiency because the speed of sound through air can change depending on the temperature, humidity in the environment.

OPTICAL TRACKING DEVICES:

Use light to measure a target’s position and orientation. The signal emitter in an optical device typically consists of a set of infrared LEDs. The sensors are cameras that can sense the emitted infrared light. The LEDs light up in sequential pulses. The cameras record the pulsed signals and send information to the system’s processing unit.

Disadvantages: Infrared radiation can also make a system less effective.

MECHANICAL TRACKING SYSTEM:

 Rely on a physical connection between the target and a fixed reference point. A common example of a mechanical tracking system in the VR field is the BOOM display. A BOOM display is an HMD mounted on the end of a mechanical arm that has two points of articulation. The system detects the position and orientation through the arm. The update rate is very high with mechanical tracking systems, but the disadvantage is that they limit a user’s range of motion.

 VIRTUAL REALITY APPLICATIONS:

As the technologies of virtual reality evolve, the applications of VR become literally unlimited. It is assumed that VR will reshape the interface between people and information technology by offering new ways for the communication of information, the visualization.

Two approaches to current VR development:

Modeling The Real World Abstract Visualization.

 MODELLING THE REAL WORLD:

ARCHITECTURE:

An area in which virtual reality has tremendous potential is in architectural design. Already being created are architectural that allow designers and clients to examine homes and office buildings, inside and out, before they’re built. With virtual reality, designers can interactively test a building before construction begins.

MILITARY:

The military have long been supporters of VR technology and development. Training programs can include everything from vehicle simulations to squad combat. On the whole, VR systems are much safer and, in the long run, less expensive than alternative training methods. Soldiers who have gone through extensive VR training have proven to be as effective as those who trained under traditional conditions.

ANXIETY THERAPY:

For years now, virtual environments have been used to treat anxiety problems with exposure therapy. Psychologists treat phobias and post traumatic stress disorder by exposing the patient to the thing that causes them anxiety and letting the anxiety dissipate on its own. But this proves difficult if your stressor is a battlefield in Iraq. Military psychologists use simulated Iraq war situations to treat soldiers. Other therapeutic VR uses include treating a fear of flying, fear of elevators, and even a “virtual nicotine craving” simulator for smoking addiction.

VR TRAINING PROGRAMS:

Virtual reality environments have also been used for training simulators. The earliest examples were flight simulators (“Microsoft Flight Simulator”), but VR training has expanded beyond just that. There are many modern military examples, including Iraqi cultural situations and battlefield simulators for soldiers.

Flight simulators are a good example of a VE system that is effective within strict limits. In a good flight simulator, a user can take the same flight path under a wide range of conditions. Users can feel what it’s like to fly through storms, thick fog or calm winds. Realistic flight simulators are effective and safe training tools, and though a sophisticated simulator can cost tens of thousands of dollars, they’re cheaper than an actual aircraft (and it’s tough to damage one in an accident). The limitation of flight simulators from a VR perspective is that they are designed for one particular task. You can’t step out of a flight simulator and remain within the virtual environment, nor can you do anything other than pilot an aircraft while inside one.

 VIRTUAL REALITY IN EDUCATION:

Virtual reality (VR) can be described as a cutting-edge technology that allows students to step through the computer or television screen into a three dimensional, computer-simulated world to learn.

MULTIPLAYER ONLINE GAMING:

One result of virtual-reality research is the existence of entirely separate virtual worlds, inhabited entirely by the avatars of real world users. These worlds are sometimes referred to as massively multiplayer online games, and the World of Warcraft is the largest virtual gaming world in use now, with 11.5 million subscribers.

THE NINTENDO WII:

Probably the most successful cousin of virtual reality on the market today is the Nintento Wii. The Wii owes its motion capture and intuitive interaction concepts to the virtual reality technologies of the past. The controller is basically a simplified version of the “virtual reality glove.” Both the Wiimote and the Wii Fit offer users another way of interacting with their virtual environment without having to wear any bulky equipment.

MEDICAL PROCEDURES:

Modern medicine has also found many uses for virtual reality. Doctors can interact with virtual systems to practice procedures or to do tiny surgical procedures on a larger scale. Surgeons have also started using virtual “twins” of their patients, to practice for surgery before doing the actual procedure. In medicine, staff can use virtual environments to train in everything from surgical procedures to diagnosing a patient. Surgeons have used virtual reality technology to not only train and educate, but also to perform surgery remotely by using robotic devices.

Researchers are using virtual reality technology to create 3-D ultrasound images to help doctors diagnose and treat congenital heart defects in children.

ABSTRACT VISUALISATION:

 The other most commonly found approach to VR application is in those areas where large quantities of abstract data need to be manipulated, examined or accessed. Such visualizations range from common datasets such as maps, to micro and macro structures such as molecular architecture or social networks. By combining VR with Geographical Information Systems (GIS), geographical information can be explored in three dimensions or the information contained within a computer database can be visualized and navigated.

Almost any situation that requires interaction with information (even mathematical algorithms can benefit from VR visualization. Users are able to visualize and interact with information through multi-dimensional graphical representations (combined with text clues). Such representations increase users’ ability to analyze the underlying data by negating the need for them to construct their own mental image of the data.

 VIRTUAL REALITY FORMATS:

As the number of applications of virtual reality (VR) has grown, there have also been changes in the different formats of VR-type software. Each format has differing approaches to, and varying degrees of, three-dimensionality, immersion and interaction.

 VIRTUAL REALITY & INTERNET:

­Some programmers envision the Internet developing into a three-dimensional virtual space, where you navigate through virtual landscapes to access information and entertainment. Web sites could take form as a three-dimensional location, allowing users to explore in a much more literal way than before. Programmers have developed several different computer languages and Web browsers to achieve this vision. Some of these include:

Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) – the earliest three-dimensional modeling language for the Web. 3DML – a three-dimensional modeling language where a user can visit a spot (or Web site) through most Internet browsers after installing a plug-in. X3D – the language that replaced VRML as the standard for creating virtual environments in the Internet. X3D superseded VRML97. Since VRML97 is a subset of the X3D standard, VRML     files can still be processed by newer X3D browsers. Collaborative Design Activity (COLLADA) – a format used to allow file interchanges within three-dimensional programs.

DEVELOPMENT DIFFICULTIES

Bottleneck of transmission bandwidth 3-D visualization technology closely integrated with the data warehouse Preserve the integrity of the database in a shared user environment

APPLICATION IN THE INTERNET

Virtual Theme Park Virtual Shopping Mall Real-time Conferencing Flight Simulation Gaming Experience

POTENTIAL VR FOR E-COMMERCE:

Three-dimensional (3-D), multi-user, online environments constitute a revolution of interactivity by creating a compelling online experience.

VE offers e-shoppers the ability study the product carefully.

Provides the e-shoppers confidence that what they see is actually what they will get. Give better description on product.

 VIRTUAL REALITY FOR TELECOMMUNICATION:

Tele-education, telemedicine, Tele-banking, Tele-work becomes possible. It improves new ways for people to interact with each other and computer.

Application of VR and Telecommunication

Telemedicine Tele-education Tele-training Tele-banking Tele-work

VR TECHNOLOGY IN TELECOMMUNICATION:

Using VR to manage Broadband Telecommunication Networks

VR user interfaces for broadband network Allows network structure, information flow to be visualized So, immediately responds through VR, reduce error Act as though in the real world using data gloves.

 VIRTUAL REALITY CHALLENGES AND CONCERNS:

Most of today’s VR applications do not conform to reality and have poor quality, but are still very useful but must be improved a lot to allow more comfortable and intuitive

Interaction with virtual worlds.

The big challenges in the field of virtual reality are developing better tracking systems, finding more natural ways to allow users to interact within a virtual environment and decreasing the time it takes to build virtual spaces. While there are a few tracking system companies that have been around since the earliest days of virtual reality, most companies are small and don’t last very long.

 The major interest was paid to visual feedback and visual display technologies resolution is

Significantly below eye’s resolving capability, luminance and color ranges do not cover the whole eye’s perception range (brightness range and gamut respectively), and finally the field of

View is relatively narrow. All these disadvantages make virtual worlds appear “artificial” and unreal, which severely contributes to the simulator sickness.

 Without well-designed hardware, a user could have trouble with his sense of balance or inertia with a decrease in the sense of telepresence, or he could experience cyber sickness, with symptoms that can include disorientation and nausea. Not all users seem to be at risk for cyber sickness — some people can explore a virtual environment for hours with no ill effects, while others may feel queasy after just a few minutes

­Some psychologists are concerned that immersion in virtual environments could psychologically affect a user.

 CONCLUSION:

Technology has transformed the world in which we live, changing how we spend our time, how we understand ourselves, and how we interact with others. Technological innovation results in social and economic change. Thus, VR will lead to the development of a Virtual World. And it is the Virtual World that promises to restructure human life and activity.