The above images are from a mixed reality conference ? split between a physical location and a single virtual world ? which occurred between the 17th and 18th of July 2009, when early-career astrobiologists met at the University of Washington in Seattle for the 6th annual Astrobiology Graduate Student Conference, colloquially known as AbGradCon.

This image shows the attendance of the virtual world ? SecondLife based ? compared to the attendance of the physical event. As you can see there is something of a size disparity. The virtual event wasn?t less popular, if anything it was more so. However, the virtual environment, does not scale well to handle large numbers of avatars. As a result, attendance is thin on the ground in comparison.

It is vital that alternative technologies are developed to work around this major problem, if mixed attendance conferences are ever truly going to take off.

Link: AbGradCon 2009: Another attempt at Mixed Reality Conferencing