Computer game engines for developing first-person virtual environments

Building realistic virtual environments is a complex, expensive and time consuming process. Although virtual environment development toolkits are available, many only provide a subset of the tools needed to build complete virtual worlds. One alternative is the reuse of computer game technology. The current generation of computer games present realistic virtual worlds featuring user friendly interaction and the simulation of real world phenomena. Using computer games as the basis for virtual environment development has a number of advantages. Computer games are robust and extensively tested, both for usability and performance, work on off-the-shelf systems and can be easily disseminated, for example via online communities. Additionally, a number of computer game developers provide tools, documentation and source code, either with the game itself or separately available, so that end-users can create new content. This short report overviews several currently available game engines that are suitable for prototyping virtual environments.

Educational virtual environments: design rationale and architecture

The use of collaborative virtual environments in e-learning is one of the most promising uses of virtual reality technology. While much research has been done in the area of networked virtual environments corresponding to the sharing of events, very little research has been done on specific services and functionality. However both the requirements and the kind of the offered services affect significantly the design of a system. In this paper we present the design and implementation of a platform suitable for educational virtual environments, which are collaborative virtual environments aiming at offering collaborative e-learning services to the users. Apart from the platform itself, we present the technological choices, and a new method for sharing virtual environments. Furthermore, we present an e-learning environment to support e-learning services using collaborative virtual environments from both the technical and functional point of view, along with the end-user evaluation results.

Real exhibitions in a virtual museum

When creating a virtual environment open to the public a number of challenges have to be addressed. The equipment has to be chosen carefully in order to be be able to withstand hard everyday usage, and the application has not only to be robust and easy to use, but has also to be appealing to the user, etc. The current paper presents findings gathered from the creation of a multi-thematic virtual museum environment to be offered to visitors of real world museums. A number of design and implementation aspects are described along with an experiment designed to evaluate alternative approaches for implementing the navigation in a virtual museum environment. The paper is concluded with insights gained from the development of the virtual museum and portrays future research plans.

Character emotion experience in virtual environments

The present paper presents an emotion module from an authoring tool of interactive storytelling being developed within the European Project—INSCAPE. The Atmosphere Editor (AE) is an INSCAPE software plug-in. Its aim is to help authors to easily create virtual interactive scenes that are recognized as emotional in order to contribute to higher coherence of their content and simultaneously to emphasize their communication purposes. It works through the attribution of emotional meaning to virtual environments and characters classes that act on the virtual story-world. Therefore, it is designed to produce a semantic intervention in the story but does not intend to transcend the storyteller work. AE presents then a taxonomy capable of sustaining the communicational optimization of the interactive narratives at an emotional level. The AE intervention develops in addition a possible pedagogical virtue permitting the learning by the story authors about potential emotional uses of specific virtual parameters. It permits also the INSCAPE user to understand the emotional semantics canons of the interactive virtual stories.

Navigation help in 3D worlds: some empirical evidences on use of sound

The concept of Interaction Locus (IL) has been introduced to help the users to orient, navigate, and identify relevant interaction areas in 3D Virtual Environments (VEs). The IL is a multimodal concept: it adds to the 3D visual scene parallel information channels that are perceived by other senses. In particular, the IL emphasizes the role of music as a navigation aid in a VE. This paper reports three user-evaluations of different IL enriched virtual worlds, and in particular of the role of the IL auditory component. Results suggest that audio in 3D plays not only an aesthetic role, which the users greatly appreciate, but also a functional role simplifying navigation and helping the users to recognise scenes in the environment. Such a functional role however is subordinated to a proper understanding of the link between music and virtual space. While these experiments refer to desktop virtual reality environments, their findings are general enough to inform the design of navigational tools for other segments of the mixed reality domain.

Visual–haptic perception of compliant objects in artificially generated environments

Perception of compliant objects through a human system interface with visual–haptic feedback was investigated. Participants had to explore virtual cubes at different compliances by squeezing them with their fingers and observing them visually and haptically. The cubes were rendered by admittance control. Perception of compliance was analyzed using an adaptive staircase method. Results showed that visual–haptic perception of compliant environments is less accurate than perception of position and force stimuli. Furthermore, due to the important role of the visual feedback cross-modal comparisons are more difficult than bimodal comparisons.

The 2007 IEEE CEC simulated car racing competition

This paper describes the simulated car racing competition that was arranged as part of the 2007 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Both the game that was used as the domain for the competition, the controllers submitted as entries to the competition and its results are presented. With this paper, we hope to provide some insight into the efficacy of various computational intelligence methods on a well-defined game task, as well as an example of one way of running a competition. In the process, we provide a set of reference results for those who wish to use the simplerace game to benchmark their own algorithms. The paper is co-authored by the organizers and participants of the competition.

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Finding cohesive clusters for analyzing knowledge communities

Documents and authors can be clustered into “knowledge communities” based on the overlap in the papers they cite. We introduce a new clustering algorithm, Streemer, which finds cohesive foreground clusters embedded in a diffuse background, and use it to identify knowledge communities as foreground clusters of papers which share common citations. To analyze the evolution of these communities over time, we build predictive models with features based on the citation structure, the vocabulary of the papers, and the affiliations and prestige of the authors. Findings include that scientific knowledge communities tend to grow more rapidly if their publications build on diverse information and if they use a narrow vocabulary.

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Interaction with a desktop virtual environment: a 2D view into a 3D world

With the development of computer software and hardware in the past few years, it has been possible to produce effective training virtual environments on everyday personal computers with little expert training required for users or designers. However, the development of the equipment that enables this has brought little coinciding research on what features to include when designing these environments. Despite these increased advances in PC capabilities for desktop virtual environments (VEs), there are still limitations on the number of objects that can be programmed to be interactive, usually due to restrictions on programming time and cost. As a result, it is often left to the programmer to decide which of the objects included to increase the realism of the environment will be interactive and which aesthetic. The work presented in this paper is an experiment that aims to establish a guide for environment designers to aid effective environment interaction development by identifying key elements in a VE design.

Collaborative virtual learning environments: design and evaluation

E-learning systems have gone through a radical change from the initial text-based environments to more stimulating multimedia systems. Such systems are Collaborative Virtual Environments, which could be used in order to support collaborative e-learning scenarios. The main aim of this paper is to aid educational designers in selecting, designing and evaluating three dimensional collaborative virtual environments in order to gain the pedagogical benefits of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. Therefore, this paper initially discusses the potential of three dimensional networked virtual environments for supporting collaborative learning. Furthermore, based on a two-step platform selection process this paper (a) presents and compares three dimensional multi-user virtual environments for supporting collaborative learning and (b) validates the most promising solution against a set of design principles for educational virtual environments. According to these principles, an educational environment has been implemented on top of the selected platform in order to support collaborative e-learning scenarios. The design of this environment is also presented. In addition, this paper presents the results of three small scale studies carried out in a tertiary education department, to assess the educational environment. This environment has been evaluated based on a hybrid evaluation methodology for uncovering usability problems, collecting further requirements for additional functionality to support collaborative virtual learning environments, and determining the appropriateness of different kinds of learning scenarios.

Evolving strategy for a probabilistic game of imperfect information using genetic programming

We provide the complete record of methodology that let us evolve BrilliAnt, the winner of the Ant Wars contest. Ant Wars contestants are virtual ants collecting food on a grid board in the presence of a competing ant. BrilliAnt has been evolved through a competitive one-population coevolution using genetic programming and fitnessless selection. In this paper, we detail the evolutionary setup that lead to BrilliAnt’s emergence, assess its direct and indirect human-competitiveness, and describe the behavioral patterns observed in its strategy.

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Learning from others within the landscape of “transitional economies” and the challenge in ICT development for African countries

This paper presents the experience of good practices and bench learning in the EU for sustainable development in transitional economies. In exploring key issues of ICT development for economic growth in African countries, it will showcase how information and experience from different geographical/economic sectors within the EU have been collated into a comprehensive knowledge system, and shared among users, using both electronic and traditional methods—see The BEEP Project . It will then discuss how this good practice model could be developed further as a Pan-African Initiative, as part of the IST Africa Programme for participating countries, to enable them share experience and information in their attempt to narrow the digital divide for sustainable growth.

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The Visible Human<Superscript>®</Superscript> at the University of Colorado 15 years later

The Visible Human has come through ages, providing a foundation of photorealistic anatomy for learner-centered, interactive education. Pathways for improvement of the Visible Human process for reverse engineering the macrostructure of the human body have been developed to provide higher resolution and decreased production time for segmentation and modeling human form. The assignment of physical properties, the development of algorithms for the interaction of surgical tools with this virtual anatomy and the availability of high-fidelity haptic interfaces provide the basis for fully immersive surgical training and certification in an environment that is zero direct-risk to patients. Interactive journal publishing, 3D stereoscopic anatomical visualization software and surgical simulators, all based on the Visible Human, the history of the Project and its utilization and provide a framework for its evolution and role in delivering education, training, certification and credentialing through virtual reality to the health care workforce of tomorrow.

Haptics-based virtual reality periodontal training simulator

This paper focuses upon the research and development of a prototype dental simulator for training of periodontal procedures. By the use of virtual reality and haptics technology, the periodontal simulator allows trainees to learn performing diagnosis and treatment of periodontal diseases by visualizing a three-dimensional virtual human mouth and feeling real tactile sensations while touching the surface of teeth, gingiva, and calculi with virtual dental instruments. Since periodontics requires dentists to depend primarily on tactile sensations to perform diagnostic and surgical procedures, the use of haptics is unquestionably crucial for a realistic periodontal simulator. The haptics-based virtual reality periodontal training simulator has been validated by a experiment conducted by the College of Dentistry at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with faculty members and dental students, which demonstrates the scientific contribution and usefulness of the simulator as a vital part of the curriculum of the Department of Periodontics at UIC.

Augmented &; Virtual Reality applications in the field of logistics

Changing basic conditions in the field of logistics requires intuitive planning methods as well as new ways of supporting and educating the operative staff. VR and AR show a great promise for that.

Methods for quantitative usability requirements: a case study on the development of the user interface of a mobile phone

Quantitative usability requirements are a critical but challenging, and hence an often neglected aspect of a usability engineering process. A case study is described where quantitative usability requirements played a key role in the development of a new user interface of a mobile phone. Within the practical constraints of the project, existing methods for determining usability requirements and evaluating the extent to which these are met, could not be applied as such, therefore tailored methods had to be developed. These methods and their applications are discussed.

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E-redesigning of society: towards experiential connectivity of generations in Lithuania

The paper reflects on the unique experience of social and technological development in Lithuania since the regaining of independence as a newly reshaped society constructing a distinctive competitive IST-based model at global level. This has presented Lithuanian pattern of how to integrate different experiences and relations between generations in implementing complex information society approaches. The resulting programme in general is linked to the Lisbon objectives of the European Union. The experience of transitional countries in Europe, each different but facing some common problems, may be useful to developing countries in Africa.

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ONTRACK: Dynamically adapting music playback to support navigation

Listening to music on personal, digital devices whilst mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. We explore a scheme for exploiting this practice to immerse listeners in navigation cues. Our prototype, ONTRACK, continuously adapts audio, modifying the spatial balance and volume to lead listeners to their target destination. First we report on an initial lab-based evaluation that demonstrated the approach’s efficacy: users were able to complete tasks within a reasonable time and their subjective feedback was positive. Encouraged by these results we constructed a handheld prototype. Here, we discuss this implementation and the results of field-trials. These indicate that even with a low-fidelity realisation of the concept, users can quite effectively navigate complicated routes.

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Multimodal support to group dynamics

The complexity of group dynamics occurring in small group interactions often hinders the performance of teams. The availability of rich multimodal information about what is going on during the meeting makes it possible to explore the possibility of providing support to dysfunctional teams from facilitation to training sessions addressing both the individuals and the group as a whole. A necessary step in this direction is that of capturing and understanding group dynamics. In this paper, we discuss a particular scenario, in which meeting participants receive multimedia feedback on their relational behaviour, as a first step towards increasing self-awareness. We describe the background and the motivation for a coding scheme for annotating meeting recordings partially inspired by the Bales’ Interaction Process Analysis. This coding scheme was aimed at identifying suitable observable behavioural sequences. The study is complemented with an experimental investigation on the acceptability of such a service.

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