Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

A survey of real-time crowd rendering

In this survey we review, classify and compare existing approaches for real-time crowd rendering. We first overview character animation techniques, as they are highly tied to crowd rendering performance, and then we analyze the state of the art in crowd rendering. We discuss different representations for level-of-detail (LoD) rendering of animated characters, including polygon-based, point-based, and image-based techniques, and review different criteria for runtime LoD selection. Besides LoD approaches, we review classic acceleration schemes, such as frustum culling and occlusion culling, and describe how they can be adapted to handle crowds of animated characters. We also discuss specific acceleration techniques for crowd rendering, such as primitive pseudo-instancing, palette skinning, and dynamic key-pose caching, which benefit from current graphics hardware. We also address other factors affecting performance and realism of crowds such as lighting, shadowing, clothing and variability. Finally we provide an exhaustive comparison of the most relevant approaches in the field.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Enhancing Perception of Complex Sculptural Forms using Interactive Real-time Ray tracing

This paper looks at experiments into using real-time ray tracing to significantly enhance shape perception of complex three-dimensional digitally created structures. The author is a computational artist whose artistic practice explores the creation of intricate organic three-dimensional forms using simulation of morphogenesis. The generated forms are often extremely detailed, comprising tens of millions of cellular primitives. This often makes depth perception of the resulting structures difficult. His practice has explored various techniques to create presentable artefacts from the data, including high resolution prints, animated videos, stereoscopic installations, 3D printing and virtual reality. The author uses ray tracing techniques to turn the 3D data created from his morphogenetic simulations into visible artefacts. This is typically a time-consuming process, taking from seconds to minutes to create a single frame. The latest generation of graphics processing units offer dedicated hardware to accelerate ray tracing calculations. This potentially allows the generation of ray traced images, including self-shadowed complex structures and multiple levels of transparency, from new viewpoints at frame rates capable of real-time interaction. The author presents the results of his experiments using this technology with the aim of providing significantly enhanced perception of his generated three-dimensional structures by allowing user-initiated interaction to generate novel views, and utilizing depth cues such as stereopsis, depth from motion and defocus blurring. The intention is for these techniques to be usable to present new exhibitable works in a gallery context

Output-Sensitive Rendering of Detailed Animated Characters for Crowd Simulation

High-quality, detailed animated characters are often represented as textured polygonal meshes. The problem with this technique is the high cost that involves rendering and animating each one of these characters. This problem has become a major limiting factor in crowd simulation. Since we want to render a huge number of characters in real-time, the purpose of this thesis is therefore to study the current existing approaches in crowd rendering to derive a novel approach. The main limitations we have found when using impostors are (1) the big amount of memory needed to store them, which also has to be sent to the graphics card, (2) the lack of visual quality in close-up views, and (3) some visibility problems. As we wanted to overcome these limitations, and improve performance results, the found conclusions lead us to present a new representation for 3D animated characters using relief mapping, thus supporting an output-sensitive rendering. The basic idea of our approach is to encode each character through a small collection of textured boxes storing color and depth values. At runtime, each box is animated according to the rigid transformation of its associated bone in the animated skeleton. A fragment shader is used to recover the original geometry using an adapted version of relief mapping. Unlike competing output-sensitive approaches, our compact representation is able to recover high-frequency surface details and reproduces view-motion parallax e ects. Furthermore, the proposed approach ensures correct visibility among di erent animated parts, and it does not require us to prede ne the animation sequences nor to select a subset of discrete views. Finally, a user study demonstrates that our approach allows for a large number of simulated agents with negligible visual artifacts

STUDI LITERATUR PENGEMBANGAN MOTION GRAPHIC VIDEO SEBAGAI TREN MEDIA PEMBELAJARAN UNTUK MENINGKATKAN HASIL BELAJAR

Motion graphic pada umumnya merupakan gabungan dari potongan-potongan desain atau animasi yang berbasis visual yang menggabungkan bahasa film dengan desain grafis yang dapat dicapai dengan memasukkan sejumlah elemen berbeda seperti animasi, video, film, tipografi, ilustrasi, dan music. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui efek motion graphic video sebagai media pembelajaran, Penelitian ini menggunakan metode Systematic Literature Review (SLR), yang terdiri dari 4 langkah penelitian yaitu Research Question, Search Process, Inclusion  and  Exclusion  Criteria, dan Quality Assesment. Hasil dari penelitian ini didapatkan bahwa media pembelajaran motion graphic video secara langsung memberikan dampak positif terhadap nilai siswa

Motion comics: the emergence of a hybrid medium

This paper examines the recent emergence of the motion comic as part of a growing relationship between comic books, animation and new forms of digital entertainment and distribution. Motion comics typically appropriate the narrative and ‘static’ artwork of a comic book, which is then manipulated by animation software such as Adobe’s After Effects to create an impression that is similar to paper-cut animation. Early examples of the motion comic form include the episodic web-based Broken Saints (Burgess 2001-2003), as well as Saw: Rebirth (Shuter and Viney 2005). This paper will reveal a number of motion comic aesthetics via a brief analysis of Watchmen (Moore and Gibbons 1986) (Motion Comic Director: Hughes 2008). A number of interactive digital comic narratives are also explored, including Pocom (Emerl.com 2013) and an overview of the ‘App’-based title CIA: Operation Ajax (Burwen et al. 2011)

Interactive natural user interfaces

For many years, science fiction entertainment has showcased holographic technology and futuristic user interfaces that have stimulated the world\u27s imagination. Movies such as Star Wars and Minority Report portray characters interacting with free-floating 3D displays and manipulating virtual objects as though they were tangible. While these futuristic concepts are intriguing, it\u27s difficult to locate a commercial, interactive holographic video solution in an everyday electronics store. As used in this work, it should be noted that the term holography refers to artificially created, free-floating objects whereas the traditional term refers to the recording and reconstruction of 3D image data from 2D mediums. This research addresses the need for a feasible technological solution that allows users to work with projected, interactive and touch-sensitive 3D virtual environments. This research will aim to construct an interactive holographic user interface system by consolidating existing commodity hardware and interaction algorithms. In addition, this work studies the best design practices for human-centric factors related to 3D user interfaces. The problem of 3D user interfaces has been well-researched. When portrayed in science fiction, futuristic user interfaces usually consist of a holographic display, interaction controls and feedback mechanisms. In reality, holographic displays are usually represented by volumetric or multi-parallax technology. In this work, a novel holographic display is presented which leverages a mini-projector to produce a free-floating image onto a fog-like surface. The holographic user interface system will consist of a display component: to project a free-floating image; a tracking component: to allow the user to interact with the 3D display via gestures; and a software component: which drives the complete hardware system. After examining this research, readers will be well-informed on how to build an intuitive, eye-catching holographic user interface system for various application arenas

The Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games

This paper lays out a unified framework of the ergodic animage, the rule-based and interactiondriven part of visual representation in video games. It is the end product of a three-year research project conducted by the INTEGRAE team, and is divided into three parts. Part 1 contextualizes the research on graphics and visuality within game studies, notably through the opposition between fiction and rules and the difficulties in finding common vocabulary to discuss key visual concepts such as perspective and point of view. Part 2 discusses a number of visual traditions through which we frame video game graphics (film, animation, art history, graphical projection and technical drawing), highlighting their relevance and shortcomings in addressing the long history of video games and the very different paradigms of 2D and 3D graphics. Part 3 presents the Game FAVR, a model that allows any game’s visual representation to be described and discussed through a common frame and vocabulary. The framework is presented in an accessible manner and is organized as a toolkit, with sample case studies, templates, and a flowchart for using the FAVR provided as an annex, so that researchers and students can immediately start using it

Faster data structures and graphics hardware techniques for high performance rendering

Computer generated imagery is used in a wide range of disciplines, each with different requirements. As an example, real-time applications such as computer games have completely different restrictions and demands than offline rendering of feature films. A game has to render quickly using only limited resources, yet present visually adequate images. Film and visual effects rendering may not have strict time requirements but are still required to render efficiently utilizing huge render systems with hundreds or even thousands of CPU cores. In real-time rendering, with limited time and hardware resources, it is always important to produce as high rendering quality as possible given the constraints available. The first paper in this thesis presents an analytical hardware model together with a feed-back system that guarantees the highest level of image quality subject to a limited time budget. As graphics processing units grow more powerful, power consumption becomes a critical issue. Smaller handheld devices have only a limited source of energy, their battery, and both small devices and high-end hardware are required to minimize energy consumption not to overheat. The second paper presents experiments and analysis which consider power usage across a range of real-time rendering algorithms and shadow algorithms executed on high-end, integrated and handheld hardware. Computing accurate reflections and refractions effects has long been considered available only in offline rendering where time isn’t a constraint. The third paper presents a hybrid approach, utilizing the speed of real-time rendering algorithms and hardware with the quality of offline methods to render high quality reflections and refractions in real-time. The fourth and fifth paper present improvements in construction time and quality of Bounding Volume Hierarchies (BVH). Building BVHs faster reduces rendering time in offline rendering and brings ray tracing a step closer towards a feasible real-time approach. Bonsai, presented in the fourth paper, constructs BVHs on CPUs faster than contemporary competing algorithms and produces BVHs of a very high quality. Following Bonsai, the fifth paper presents an algorithm that refines BVH construction by allowing triangles to be split. Although splitting triangles increases construction time, it generally allows for higher quality BVHs. The fifth paper introduces a triangle splitting BVH construction approach that builds BVHs with quality on a par with an earlier high quality splitting algorithm. However, the method presented in paper five is several times faster in construction time