Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

In this paper, we propose VR@Home, an immersive contents creation system for 3D User-Generated Contents(UGC). VR@Home system enables users to create realistic 3D contents for themselves and to interact with the contents. It also augments users in the virtual environment. The four components of VR@Home system, image-based modeling, real-time user segmentation, real-time soft shadow generation, and tangible user interface, provide solutions to the challenges emerging from the limitations of home environment. The proposed system is not only for 3D UGC creation, but also can be applied to interactive on-line education, personal broadcasting, and entertainment such as video games.

In this paper, we present a virtual learning environment which supports the learning process of long term sick children. By focusing on 3D Virtual Environments technology chronically ill students can still be ‘telepresent’ in their classroom.

Analysis of existing ICT-based solutions reveal weaknesses including the absence of social involvement, the high cost of developing, and mobility issues. Our system, however, is based on concrete user needs, is educational sound and relevant, and offers a scalable and affordable solution. To this end we incorporate innovative hardware, software and connectivity features, set in a user friendly user interface based on 3D technologies.

We believe our system (re)establishes high quality communication between the sick children and their regular school and classroom learning environment. Furthermore, even after school pupils are attracted to meet each other in the virtual learning environment in order to communicate and share information.

Interactive storytelling and gaming technologies have great edutainment potential for engaging visitors with museum exhibitions. This paper presents the development and testing of the devised originally within the Factual and Learning Interactive Television Department of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and continued development at the University of Brighton. The project combines both interactive television storytelling and gaming technologies to immerse museum visitors with artefacts on exhibition, engaging the user into physical space using virtual stories.

The next generation of virtual environments for training is oriented towards collaborative aspects. Therefore, we have decided to enhance our platform for virtual training environments, adding collaboration opportunities and integrating humanoids. In this paper we put forward a model of humanoid that suits both virtual humans and representations of real users, according to collaborative training activities. We suggest adaptations to the scenario model of our platform making it possible to write collaborative procedures. We introduce a mechanism of action selection made up of a global repartition and an individual choice. These models are currently being integrated and validated in GVT, a virtual training tool for maintenance of military equipments, developed in collaboration with the French company NEXTER-Group.

Most educational or training games, also referred to as serious games, have been developed without an underlying design theory. In order to make a contribution to the development of such a theory, we present the underlying design philosophy of , a 3D first-person game used to train levee patrollers in the Netherlands. This approach stipulates that the design of a serious game is a multi-objective problem where trade-offs need to be made. Making these trade-offs takes place in a ’design space’ defined by three general boundary criteria: 1. fun (game), 2. learning (pedagogy), and 3. validity (reality). The various tensions between these three criteria make it difficult to ’balance’ or create harmony in a serious game. We illustrate this process with a discussion on the design of . In addition, we translate the aforementioned general design criteria into a number of concrete design requirements for serious games.

We present in this paper researches focused on specification and production of virtual training environments. The use of Virtual Environments (VE) for training is strongly stimulated by important needs of training on sensitive equipment. But the development of such applica- tions is generally done in new projects, where the reusability of existing developments is a major issue. We present here a platform of development, based on internal models that have been designed to achieve this reusability and standardization for the efficient development of new virtual environments.We defined a new generic model named STORM, used to describe reusable behaviors for 3D objects and reusable interactions between those objects or with humans. We also defined a scenario lan- guage named LORA, which allow non-computer scientists author various and complex sequences of tasks in a virtual scene. Based on those models, as an industrial validation with , we have created 20 operational scenarios of maintenance virtual training on military equipments. We are also begining to create collaborative environments, where virtual and real humans have to collaborate to achieve their procedures.

In this paper, we evaluate the usability of multimodal feedback for enhancing immersion in augmented reality (AR) based product design environments, introduced in the paper [1]. We study what effects occur when providing multi-sensory feedback to users. First of all, we compare design environments between conventional desktop based design environments and AR based design environments which support multimodal feedback. For a usability test for visual feedback, we test the degree of immersion for showing hands which are occluded by augmented virtual objects, and test the suitability of mapping between content and users’ input. In sound feedback, also we test the degree of immersion and suitability of mapping between background-sound/effect sound mapping and corresponding events in the scenario. Lastly, as a test for tactile feedback, we evaluate the effect of the physical entity for virtual objects by registering the object to physical tangible objects, and evaluate the degree of immersion for vibration w.r.t events in scenario. Our analyzed results from usability tests and comments could be useful for enhancing immersion in conventional AR based product design as well as AR based learning and teaching contents for edutainment.

Cycling is one of the current thirteen elite sports in Hong Kong. Despite cycling is one of the well known activities in the world and has numerous advantages for health, it is still far from popular in Hong Kong. In this research, a virtual cycling simulator is developed for exercise and entertainment purpose, and for promoting the cycling activity. The hardware of the cycling simulator consists of four major units including a bike platform, an actuation unit, a sensing unit and a display unit. The control system receives signals from the sensing unit and controls the motions of the actuation unit. It also computes and renders the virtual environment in real-time thereby providing the experience of cycling on different terrain models.

Virtual Environments (VE) are mainly visual experiments that exclude visually impaired people. In this paper we present an application that should allow almost everybody to “see” or at least to perceive 3D shapes. We will first describe the mandatory aspects of such an application, the tests we made and finally conclude by the results we obtained with geometrically basic shapes that are very promising.

As many 3D on-line games appear, there is an increased need for simple and efficient techniques to create many new faces. This paper presents a new algorithm to composite 3D faces for game characters. No remeshing or segmentation of 3D models is required in our method. Our algorithm is composed of four simple steps: building a one-to-one geometric correspondence between models, local resampling, computing relative geometry, and blending geometry. Our new algorithm can provide various composite operations such as replacement, interpolation, or randomization by assigning different weights for geometry blending. The space and time complexity of our algorithm is linear to the combined number of vertices of input meshes which means it is efficient enough for interactive operation. Our new method is expected to easily and quickly give a unique appearance to 3D game characters or anonymous crowds.