Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Museum is now a good experimental field of VR technology. In this paper, several museum exhibits which utilized latest VR technology which include “High resolution VR” supported by sophisticated image environment such as IPT ( immersive projection technology ), and “real world VR” supported by mobile technology such as wearable computers are introduced. Interaction design for these kind of novel exhibits is also discussed.

In this paper, we present a Context-based Storytelling with Responsive Multimedia System (RMS). Many researches related to virtual storytelling have been presented with the advancement of multimedia technology. However, people have different abilities to understand a story according to their experience, knowledge, age, gender, etc. In the proposed approach, virtual story is unfolded by interaction between users, Multi-modal Tangible User Interface (MTUI) and Virtual Environment Manager (VEManager) with vr-UCAM (a unified Context-aware Application Model for Virtual Environments). We adopt an interactive StoryMap and tangible interfaces into MTUI with vr-UCAM such that VEManager can control the responses of virtual objects according to the user’s context. Accordingly, the users can experience a personalized story since action of virtual objects, interaction level and scene of VE are reorganized and adjusted according to a user’s profile and preference. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, we applied it to a virtual storytelling with RMS. According to the experimental results, we observed that the combination of virtual reality technology and context-aware computing could be promising technologies that enables users to experience a personalized virtual story. Therefore, we expect that the proposed approach plays an important role in virtual storytelling applications such as education, entertainment, games, etc.

Flat 2D screens cannot display complex 3D structures without the usage of different slices of the 3D model. A volumetric display, like the FELIX 3D Display can solve this problem. It provides space-filling images and is characterized by “multi-viewer” and “all-round view” capabilities without requiring cumbersome goggles. The FELIX 3D Displays of the swept volume type use laser-light to project real three-dimensional images upwards a rotating screen. Because of some disadvantages using rotating parts in this setup, the FELIX Team started investigations also in the area of static volume displays. The so called, “SolidFELIX” prototypes, have transparent crystals as a projection volume. The image is created by two or one IR-laser beams. The projected images within all FELIX 3D Displays provide a fascinating, aesthetic impression through their inherent, unique three-dimensional appearance. These features of a 3D display could be combined in an interface between a virtual reality scene and the real world. Real-time interactions and animations are possible. Furthermore, the display could host an intelligent autonomous avatar that might appear within the display volume. Potential applications as a virtual reality interface include the fields of entertainment, education, art, museum exhibitions, etc. The FELIX 3D project team has evolved from a scientific working group of students and teachers at a normal high school in northern Germany. Despite minor funding resources considerable results have been achieved in the past.

Personal goals are difficult to achieve and healthy habits are not as simple to maintain as people would like to. Often, humans look for help to change unwanted behavior. Technology could help us to overcome the daily struggle faced during the search for behavior improvement. The Persuasive Mirror is an example of how computerize persuasion, in the form of visual feedback, could give the needed support.

Sound Navigation consists in browsing through different sound objects and sound generators situated within a virtual world including virtual spatialized sound and visual scenes, to perform a musical trajectory and composition. In the PHASE Project installation, the 3D virtual world resembles the surface of a vinyl disk, magnified so that one can see the groove and move a “needle” (the “reading head”) in it and out of it to read the disk. Another such “needle” (the “writing head”) can “write” music in the groove. A part of the game is a pursuit between the writing head and the reading head handled by the player. Different musical devices have been implemented. Most of them have a haptic behavior. The scenario is fully related to the musical metaphor and aims to give equivalent pleasure to contemplative as well as to competitive players.

We describe an action planning approach that integrates a system of autonomous dialogue engines with narration and presentation modules to create a multi-modal storytelling environment. The goal is to let multiple virtual and human participants act on equal footing in a story that allows interactions that are flexible, but also constrained to ensure the success of the narrative goals. The model allows to combine scripted and planned behavior. The state of the story goals is continuously reflected to the narration module to allow it a fine-grained control over the development of the story.

This paper presents the mechanisms proposed by a generic cognitive architecture for virtual characters with emotional influenced behaviors, called cognitiva , to maintain behavior control at will without giving up the richness provided by emotions. This architecture, together with a progressive specification process for its application, have been used successfully to model 3D intelligent virtual actors for virtual storytelling.

We introduce an approach to multimodal generation of verbal and nonverbal contributions for virtual characters in a multiparty dialogue scenario. This approach addresses issues of turn-taking, is able to synchronize the different modalities in real-time, and supports fixed utterances as well as utterances that are assembled by a full-fledged tree-based text generation algorithm. The system is implemented in a first version as part of the second VirtualHuman demonstrator.

Scenejo is an Interactive Storytelling platform, supporting both structured story lines and emergent behavior. Authoring is performed either at the level of a story graph or dialogue patterns. The Scenejo platform supports several artificial actors conversing with a number of real actors, representing the users in the system. Artificial actors are visualized as animated 3d characters, and actor responses are presented by speech synthesis in combination with non-verbal behavior.

Making you cry is the folk wisdom test for strong narrative involvement, and has long been proposed as a reachable but distant goal for digital games. Immersion is a related phenomenon which has been difficult to achieve in Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality research projects, but reliably achieved in theme park rides by integrating interactivity with strong narrative elements. For Virtual and Mixed Reality environments to achieve narrative power and strong immersion we can adopt the strategies of theme park rides, with special attention to the creation of threshold objects that take the interactor into the virtual space. Spatial presentation of the world, interactions with characters, and differentiating real from virtual events are design challenges without clear genre conventions. Design choices that locate the interactor in a coherent point of view, limit natural language expectations, and conventionalize the boundaries of the virtual world will reinforce immersion and dramatic agency.