VE2008Posters
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Item An Approach to Interaction Interoperability for Distributed Virtual Environments(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Ahmed, Hussein M.; Gracanin, Denis; Abdel-Hamid, Ayman; Matkovic, Kresimir; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerWe present a preliminary framework for interaction interoperability in Distributed Virtual Environments (DVEs). The goal is to allow each user to use a different input devices and interaction techniques and yet collaborate seamlessly. The framework adopts Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and use a knowledge base in the form of three ontologies. The ontologies use Web Ontology Language (OWL) to describe input devices, interaction techniques and interaction tasks. In addition, two directories contain application and user profiles. An inference engine searches for the best possible combination of input devices, interaction techniques and tasks. The resulting user's mapping file is then accessed using web services. Two proof-of-concept framework implementations demonstrate how to develop a new application and how to support a legacy application.Item Drawing the Gaps: Graphical Methods for Representing Geospatial and Temporal Uncertainty with Cultural Artifacts(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Trutoiu, Laura C.; Ownby, Caitlin; Shirley, Peter; Thompson, William; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerModern visualization tools can present geographic information system (GIS) data as a 3D rendering, facilitating a user's understanding of the geospatial relationships between terrain and cultural features. While this capability has been present for some time in professional GIS systems such as Arcinfo, it is now also available in commodity programs such as Google Earth. As is the case with most large knowledge bases, source data in GIS systems is often incomplete, contradictory, or otherwise uncertain. This paper describes an approach to indicating uncertainty in the location and lifespan of cultural features in GIS visualizations. Such indications of uncertainty are important even when source data comes from ostensibly reliable sources. They become nearly essential with communitysupplied source data such as Google Earth's 3D Warehouse. Representing uncertain data in the same context with accurate data requires contrasting between the two as well as keeping the representation as perceptually facile as possible. We start by organizing uncertainty into a small set of broad categories that are useful to distinguish between in many GIS visualization applications. We then argue that the 3D display in GIS system should use specific graphical styles to depict different types of data uncertainty.Item Effects of Platform (Immersive versus Non-immersive) on Usability and Enjoyment of a Virtual Learning Environment for Deaf and Hearing Children(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Adamo-Villani, Nicoletta; Wilbur, Ronnie B.; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerWe report a user study focusing on the effects of platform (immersive, non-immersive) on usability and enjoyment of a deafaccessible game for K-5 math and science education. The study highlighted hearing status and gender differences in using the two systems. Twenty-one children played the SMILE game [AVW07] in a FLEX immersive display with wand interaction and on a desktop computer with mouse and keyboard interaction. They were tasked with traveling to two different locations in the virtual environment, and with constructing an object (e.g., baking a cake). Their speed and accuracy in the tasks were scored, and they completed a survey with rating questions on game fun and ease of use in both platforms. Measured task times (travel and object construction) did not differ consistently with platform. Object construction took longer in the FLEX whereas non-primed search travel took longer on the desktop. Hearing Status was significant for cake baking and approached significance for travel. Deaf children took longer and made more mistakes than hearing children on both platforms. Gender was not significant for the travel but was significant for object construction with girls taking longer than boys on both systems. Increased video game familiarity was correlated with reduced travel times and reduced errors on both platforms. Platform differences were seen in the rating of "fun", with the FLEX rated significantly more fun than the desktop by all subjects.Item Exploring Unsteady Flows by Parallel Extraction of Property-enhanced Pathlines and Interactive Post-filtering(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Vetter, Michael; Manten, Sebastian; Olbrich, Stephan; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerIn this work a new approach of the visualization of unsteady high-resolution flow data in a network processing chain using property-enhanced traced particles or pathlines is presented. This approach allows to select subsets of pathlines according to additional given or calculated properties in the local environment and history of the pathlines and is an alternative method to classical feature extraction. As such, traditional property-controlled seeding strategies - as part of visualization mapping - are replaced by post-filtering based on multiplexed properties and geometries - as part of rendering. Inserted into our distributed visualization framework DSVR the selection of subsets is realized as an interactive "query over a stream" which considerably increases the degree of interaction in real time and also in 3D video-on-demand scenarios.Item Improvement Rendering of Web3D Using the Shading Language(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Sakai, Masahiro; Ichijo, Noriyuki; Dobashi, Yoshinori; Yamamoto, Tshuyoshi; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerMany Web3D systems for managing 3DCG in the contents of HTML pages use fixed shaders for graphics API for real-time 3DCG rendering, so it is difficult to simulate the global illumination. We propose a solution to the problem of global illumination that uses a Web3D environment map in our proprietary Web3D format, "3DX" and the GPU shading language.Item Intuitive Navigation in Virtual Environments(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Steiner, Marc; Reiter, Phillipp; Ofenböck, Christian; Settgast, Volker; Ullrich, Torsten; Lancelle, Marcelle; Fellner, Dieter W.; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerWe present several novel ways of interaction and navigation in virtual worlds. Using the optical tracking system of our four-sided Definitely Affordable Virtual Environment (DAVE), we designed and implemented navigation and movement controls using the user's gestures and postures. Our techniques are more natural and intuitive than a standard 3D joystick-based approach, which compromises the immersion's impact.Item A Proposal for a Procedural Terrain Modelling Framework(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Smelik, Ruben M.; Tutenel, Tim; Kraker, Klaas Jan de; Bidarra, Rafael; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerManual game content creation is an increasingly laborious task; with each advance in graphics hardware, a higher level of fidelity and detail is achievable and, therefore, expected. Although numerous automatic (e.g. procedural) content generation algorithms and techniques have been developed over the years, their application in both games and simulations is not widespread. What lacks is a unifying modeling framework that combines these techniques in a usable manner. We propose to develop a new, high-level framework for automatic generation of virtual worlds (e.g. game levels, simulation terrain) that requires intuitive user input and results in a rich 3D terrain model.Item Usability Evaluation in Virtual Reality: A User Study Comparing Three Different Setups(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Santos, B. Sousa; Dias, P.; Silva, S.; Capucho, L.; Salgado, N.; Lino, F.; Carvalho, V.; Ferreira, C.; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerWe describe a user study comparing a low cost VR system using a Head-Mounted-Display (HMD) to a desktop and another setup where the image is projected on a screen. Eighteen participants played the same game in the three platforms. Results show that users generally did not like the setup using a screen and the best performances were obtained with the desktop configuration. This result could be due to the fact that most users were gamers used to the interaction through keyboard/mouse. Still, we noticed that user performance in the HMD setup was not dramatically worse and that users do not collide as often with walls.Item A User Guidance Approach for Passive Haptic Environments(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Steinicke, Frank; Welzel, Hanno; Bruder, Gerd; Hinrichs, Klaus; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerTraveling through virtual environments (VEs) by means of real walking is a challenging task since usually the size of the virtual world exceeds the size of the tracked interaction space. Redirected walking is one concept to solve this problem by guiding the user on a physical path which differs from the path the user visually perceives, for example, in head-mounted display (HMD) environments.The user can be redirected to certain locations in the physical space, in particular to real proxy objects which provide passive feedback. In such passive haptic environments, any number of virtual objects can be mapped to proxy objects having similar haptic properties, i. e., size, shape and texture. When the user is guided to corresponding proxy objects, s/he can sense virtual objects by touching their real world counterparts. Therefore it is vital to predict the user's movements in the virtual world in order to recognize the target location. Based on the prediction a transformed path can be determined in the physical space on which the user is guided to the desired proxy object. In this paper we present concepts how a user's path can be predicted reliably and how a corresponding path to a desired proxy object can be derived on which the user does not observe inconsistencies between vision and proprioception.Item Visible Portion Estimation of Moving Target Objects for Networked Wearable Augmented Reality(The Eurographics Association, 2008) Makita, Koji; Kanbara, M.; Yokoya, N.; Robert van Liere and Betty MohlerThis paper describes a new visible portion estimation method of moving target object for networked wearable augmented reality (AR) system. In annotation overlay applications using AR systems, it is important to improve readability and intelligibility of annotations in a user's view. View management makes it possible to appropriately generate annotation overlay images for users so as to intuitively understand annotations. For instance, overlappings of annotations and other objects can be prevented by using a view management technique. View management requires visible portions of 3D target objects in a 2D view plane. This paper proposes a visible portion estimation method for moving target objects based on positions and shapes of the moving target objects. The wearable augmented reality system obtains positions of target objects via wireless network for estimating visible portions of target objects in the user's view. Annotations are able to be overlaid by using view management techniques with our proposed visible portion estimation.