1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Managing and Mining Virtual Environments
http://www.dbs.ifi.lmu.de/~berneck/mmve2011/
November 1, 2011
2011 Chicago,Il,US

In conjunction with ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2011
http://acmgis2011.cs.umn.edu/
November 1-4, 2011
2011 Chicago,Il,US


IMPORTANT DATES
* Papers due: 2nd September 2011
* Notification: 14th October 2011
* Camera-ready copies: 26th October 2011

DESCRIPTION
Virtual Environments are computer systems maintaining a virtual 3D or 2D landscape where entities
can move, evolve and interact. With the increasing distribution of massive multiplayer online
games (MMOGs), virtual environments yield a large economical potential. Furthermore, the cost-efficient
availability of high-performance computing resources makes large scale simulations an option for a much
broader spectrum of potential users.

Many aspects of virtual environments comprise classical spatial database tasks such as managing massive
amounts of moving objects, mining trajectory information, proximity queries, path finding etc.. However,
there also exist particular requirements in virtual environments which are different from the usual
setting in the spatial community. For example, update rates are very large, the architecture often
involves rather powerful client programs and environmental physics have to be controlled by the system.
Finally, there are multiple tasks involving spatial data that do not occur in classical spatial databases
like detecting cheaters and bot programs, evaluating the fairness of a gaming maps and integrating spatial
behavior into massive numbers of computer controlled moving objects.

The aim of this workshop is to bring the area of virtual environments to the attention of researchers and
practitioners in the area of spatial information management as an emerging and challenging field of research.
Furthermore, we want to bring together researchers and practitioners from the industry to offer a unique forum
for discussion and exchange of ideas about new techniques and application areas for the field
of virtual environments.


TOPICS OF INTEREST
* mining entity trajectories
* cheat detection
* bot detection
* analyzing player strategies
* databases for moving entities
* high throughput indexing of entity positions
* managing and mining game logs
* evaluating maps for game fairness
* detection of game mechanic exploitation
* replication and parallelization in spatial databases
* spatial indexing for main memory
* persistence management in highly volatile systems
* spatial simulations
* player identification
* improving movement patterns for computer controlled entities
* efficient path search on virtual landscapes
* ranking player skill and match making
* continuous area of interest queries
* P2P virtual environments

SUBMISSION

The workshop is aimed to be a forum for novel ideas and positions. Thus, submission need not be ready for
archival publication but should be mature enough to sparkle discussion among the attendees. We strongly
encourage to submit work which is aimed to offer experimental environments and benchmarking systems which
is crucial at this early stage of the field. Submissions can be either of a technical nature or provide
new ideas in form of a visionary/challenge paper.
The format of challenge papers is mainly aimed at authors in the industry and should introduce new
practical challenges in the area of developing and maintaining virtual environments.

We have two categories of papers and presentations:
* Full research paper: up to 8 pages (20 min. talk)
* Short technical, vision or challenge paper: up to 4 pages (5-10 min. talk)

Manuscripts should be submitted in PDF format and formatted using the ACM camera-ready templates available at:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html

Papers must be electronically submitted in PDF format at the following address:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mmve11

One author per accepted workshop contribution is required to register for the conference and workshop and
attend the workshop and to present the accepted submission. Otherwise, the accepted submission will not
appear in the published workshop proceedings or in the ACM Digital Library version of the workshop proceedings.

ORGANIZERS

* General Chair
Matthias Schubert, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany

* PC Members (tentative)
* Christian Thurau, Fraunhofer IAIS
* Feifei Li, Florida State University
* Nikos Mamoulis, University of Hong Kong
* Ouri E. Wolfson, University of Illinois at Chicago
* Andreas Z?fle, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
* Vassilis J. Tsotras, University of California, Riverside
* Marcos Vaz Salles, Cornell University
* Dino Pedreshi, Universit? di Pisa
* Kuan-Ta Chen, Academia Sinica

* Proceedings Chair
Andreas Z?fle, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany
* Web Master
Thomas Bernecker, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany
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