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Virtual Characters and Virtual Environments Research Projects of the Virtual Environments Group

Virtual Characters and Virtual Environments Research Projects of the Virtual Environments Group. February 27 th , 2004 Benjamin Lok. Applications Driven Combines: Interactive Computer Graphics Computer Vision Human Computer Interaction. Virtual Experiences Group. PhD Students (2)

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Virtual Characters and Virtual Environments Research Projects of the Virtual Environments Group

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  1. Virtual Characters and Virtual EnvironmentsResearch Projects of the Virtual Environments Group February 27th, 2004 Benjamin Lok

  2. Applications Driven • Combines: • Interactive Computer Graphics • Computer Vision • Human Computer Interaction

  3. Virtual Experiences Group • PhD Students (2) • Kyle Johnsen (B.S. UF) • Cyrus Harrison (B.S., M.S. (expected) UF) • MS Students (1) • George Mora (B.S. UF) DAS • Undergraduates (4) • Sayed Hashimi (S) • Andrew Joubert (S) • John Samuelsen (S) • Art Homs (J)

  4. Overview • Computer generated characters and environments • Amazing visuals and audio • Interacting is limited! • Reduce applicability? • Goals: • Create new methods to interact • Evaluate the effectiveness of these interaction methods Aki from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Walking Experiment PIT - UNC

  5. Life-Sized Virtual Characters • Virtual Characters as a way to interact with information • If virtual characters are presented with an adequate level of realism, would people respond to them as they would to other people? • Effective Interaction • Natural (> than keyboard and mouse) • 3D, Dynamic (augmentable) • Effective Collaboration • Non-verbal communication (60%) • High impact?

  6. Thinking Virtual Character Responding Perceiving Interaction • Each participant in a communication has three stages: perception, cognition, and response • Investigate: Display, perception, efficacy Thinking Responding Perceiving Interaction Perceiving Responding Thinking Participant

  7. Projects underway • Interpersonal communication • Distributed acting rehearsal • Teaching • Medical Diagnosis Training • Training transfer • Future work: • Universal Access • Disabled • Minorities • Rural communities

  8. Virtual Environments • Been around for almost 30 years • # of systems in research labs > day to day use • Why? • Interaction with the virtual environment is too poor • Everything is virtual isn’t necessarily good • Example, change a light bulb • Approach: • Real objects as interfaces to the virtual world • Merge the real and virtual spaces • Evaluate what VR is good for!

  9. Projects underway • Getting real objects into VR to aid engineering design • Collaboration w/ Mars Airplane (Langley Research Center) • Get tools, parts, and other (possibly distributed) collaborators in a shared space

  10. Videos of Task Having a hybrid environment provides substantial benefits in prototype design.

  11. Merging real and virtual spaces

  12. Avatars in VE • Most virtual environments do not provide an avatar (user self-representation) • Why? Because tracking the human body is difficult. • Solution: Use simple computer vision to track colored markers to generate an avatar

  13. Locomotion in VR • Most common locomotion: • Use a ‘virtual walking’ metaphor. • Does this reduce effectiveness? • We can test this because of new wide-area tracking technologies.

  14. VR Interaction • Getting real objects into virtual environments • How do you naturally interact with virtual objects?

  15. Virtual Experiences Group • 2 PhD students • 1 MS • 4 Undergraduates • 15’x15’x10’ wide area tracker • Virtual Research V8 HMD • 42” Plasma TV • 4 data projectors • 120” passive stereo display • Collaboration with expertise in: • Virtual Reality • Digital Arts • Image Processing • Computational Geometry • Human Computer Interaction • Image Based Rendering

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